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ALIAS 

RED RYAN 



BOOKS BY 

CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK 


Alias Red Ryan 
A Pagan of the Hills 
Destiny 

The Battle Cry 

The Call of the Cumberlands 

The Code of the Mountains 

The Key to Yesterday 

The Lighted Match 

The Portal of Dreams 

The Roof Tree 

The Tempering 

The Tyranny of Weakness 

When Bear Cat Went Dry 


















*■ 










































“7 wanted to tell you all of that—before some one else did” 











i 

f 

- - , _____ ■ ... ■■ 

Alias 

RED RYAN 

BY 

CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK 



FRONTISPIECE 

BY 

WALTER DE MARIS 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1923 





























COPYRIGHT, 1923 , BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


✓ 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 


COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

First Edition 


MAY 26 ’23 

©C1A704G79 



ALIAS 

RED RYAN 


I\ 

£ 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


P ATROLMAN MAHAFFEY could see an il¬ 
luminated clock as he stood at the corner 
discussing with an acquaintance the evils of 
prohibition as he conceived them. By that circum¬ 
stance he was able to fix the hour of the evening defi¬ 
nitely in his mind when it came to making a report. 

“Besides anything else ye might say—and there’s 
plenty, such as makin’ hypocrites out of dacint men 
an’ women, look at what it does for us,” he observed 
gloomily. “Here with th’ paapers howlin’ about 
crime waves, with two fur warehouses robbed on me 
own bate in wan week of time, an ’ all an’ all, we’ve got 

to spind our energies nosin’ out bootleggers an-.” 

He broke off abruptly, bending attentively for¬ 
ward, and when his companion started to voice his 
lugubrious agreement, the officer raised an imperative 
hand for silence. 

“Stop!” he exclaimed. “Wasn’t that a shot I heard 
. It didn’t sound like a blowout nor yet an 
exhaust explosion . . . Hist! there it is again 

. that way . . . sure, it’s a pistol 

barkin’!” 

Officer Mahaffey wheeled and went running to- 

l 



2 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ward the sound, and as he went other noises came 
to his ear, so he began shrilling on his whistle for 
reinforcements, and loosening the buttons of his great¬ 
coat over his own holster. 

He had to run east to Broadway, up Broadway and 
around the next corner to his left, and by that time 
the first alarming sound had been augmented into 
a chorus of shouting pedestrians and an outcry of 
confused excitement. 

From farther down Broadway came the roar of a 
motorcycle cop making for the same objective and 
along the street were running other figures, yet Pa¬ 
trolman Mahaffey was the first uniformed man to 
reach the spot, and that was a tribute to his fleetness 
of foot as well as his eagerness of spirit. 

He saw a car flirt round the corner into Sixth 
Avenue before he reached the door about which 
civilian-clad men were beginning to cluster, and he 
knew that that car, which he was quick to associate 
with the crack of guns, had made its escape. 

Then, panting, he reached the door of a building 
whose number and business sign in gilt letters he 
instinctively noted and registered without pausing. 
To the half-frightened and morbidly curious men who 
clung there like flies about a sticky saucer, he gave 
the force of his elbow, and the curt command: 
“Gang-way there! Let me through!” 

They let him through, for his face was red and his 
chin thrust out and his hand gestured with a ready 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


3 


pistol. Inside the door, which stood wide, he found 
himself in a narrow hallway, and that, too, contained 
several idle onlookers—unless they were participants 
now posing as accidental arrivals. 

“Get in that door with ye . All of ye, and 

snap into it,” commanded the patrolman, herding 
them ahead of him and sweeping with a swift glance 
the room upon which the hall gave. He heard the mo¬ 
torcycle chug to a stop outside, and recognized that 
reinforcements were at hand, should he need them. 

The picture that met his eye through that door 
frame made him catch his breath for a moment, then 
he stepped in and considered it. 

The room was the office of a wholesale fur ware¬ 
house, and this made the third robbery bearing the 
same bold trade-mark that had afflicted his beat in 
the last ten days—but this was the first that had 
added murder to theft, and for an instant the police¬ 
man felt jarred with the shock. 

There were, besides the casuals he had driven 
ahead of him, two men in that room, or three if you 
counted the dead man. 

There could be little doubt about his being dead, 
even in advance of a closer examination. The set of 
the eyes in the upturned face told that story to 
Mahaffey’s experience; that and the very proclama¬ 
tion of lifelessness in the huddle of the still-bleeding 
figure lying so awkwardly crumpled on the floor be¬ 
side a desk. 


4 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


On the boards there near the centre of the space 
lay an automatic pistol, and though it burned smoke¬ 
less powder the acrid stench of nitrate came freshly 
sharp to the nostrils. 

Of the two living men, one sat in a chair, collapsed 
and tousled—perhaps wounded or perhaps exhausted 
with struggle, and the other stood looking on, a tall, 
thin, elderly man with a pistol still clenched in his 
fist. 

As Mahaffey took in these details brother officers 
came through the door and he heard the clang of 
an arriving patrol wagon, and a curt order outside, 
“Don’t any of you people go away. Some of you’ll 
be wanted to tell what you know. ” 

It is a cardinal rule of narrative that the story 
should start at its beginning, pursue its course di¬ 
rectly, and arrive concisely at its conclusion. That 
rule is in general axiomatically correct, yet there are 
times when a story does not begin at the seeming 
beginning, but runs forward and back from a centre. 
This is one of those stories, for the scene that had 
broken with such startling suddenness on the eyes 
of Patrolman Mahaffey was in reality a thing whose 
root and development lay back, some years back, in 
a soil entirely different, and into that anterior phase 
one must go to follow it with understanding. 

The start of the trail upon which the policeman 
came that night was a happening in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, and its time was before the war. 


CHAPTER I 


UT of the crater-bowl of the stadium came 



the upleap and down-dying of eruption from 


a score of thousands of human throats, but 


to the blanketed braves in the locker room it was 
like the reverberation of artillery pounding away 
perfunctorily beyond their range. 

There in their mole-skin armour, between halves of 
the season’s first game, these men who carried, in 
heavy responsibility, the football honour of Harvard, 
were more poignantly alive to the sharp staccato 
of a single voice raised in the same walls with them¬ 
selves—the voice of the head coach, impassioned 
with exhortation and accusing violence. 

The volume that eddied up and down out there 
was only such sound as boils and simmers out of a 
gigantic caldron of humanity between its moments of 
interest—the noisy whiling away of an interval with 
brass bands and cheer clubs and college yells. In¬ 
side, the head coach was using his single voice as a 
scourge and sharp-rowelled spur on the crimson 

cohort. 

“ It’s no excuse to say that our line-up to-day isn’t 
the same line-up we’ll send against Yale or Prince- 


6 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ton, ” declared the stinging voice. “ This game is the 
first of the season . . . It’s Harvard’s answer 

to all the questions as to what Harvard has this 
year . . . It’s the unveiling and exhibition 

of what we’ve built up. The press is looking on . . 

the scouts from New Haven and New Jersey are 
looking on . . . the world is looking on!” 

The head coach broke off as if something like de¬ 
spair had choked him, then he threw back his head 
and his eyes spurted jets of blaze. 

“The world is looking on and what has it seen so 
far? The first half is over and Harvard hasn’t 
scored . . . Harvard has been held by a team 

that came as a sort of scrub time-filler 
Harvard has been held by a college that felt flattered 
at the chance to come here and get drubbed by us 
The first half is over and the score is 
nothing-nothing . . .You men go back onto 

that gridiron with disgrace staring you in the face— 
unless you wipe out that first half and show ten 
times what you’ve shown so far. The football world 
came here asking, ‘What has Harvard to show us?’ 
and your answer up to date is, ‘A squad of weak- 
fish’!” 

Again he paused, and raked the circle of young 
giants who squatted grimly silent under his verbal 
lash—grimly silent but welted and stung of heart and 
conscience. 

“We might have expected them to uncork some 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


7 


trick offensives,” went on this battle-chaplain 
fiercely, “but they had no right to hold Harvard 
with their defense . . . That defense ought 

to have been torn open and frayed ragged . . . 

It must be torn ragged yet . . . Let’s see. . . 

Carson’s ankle is sprained, isn’t it? Sevens goes in 
at right end . . . and, for God’s sake, re¬ 

member Harvard is a university, not a prep school!” 

The moment of agonized suspense hung intoler¬ 
able—and for no other man in stuffed armour was 
that agony so tautly cramping as in the heart of 
Barbour Sevens. 

To Sevens the fact of being at Harvard at all had 
never lost its tincture of miracle. Always it had 
seemed a dream from which he must presently awake 
to find himself thrust back into the twilight dulness 
of such poverty as prohibits a college career. Yet 
he was here, working his way through his course, 
and though only a sophomore, he had made the 
team. Now he was being ordered into action. Men 
in hundreds who could buy and sell him with their 
pocket money would have given years of life to be in 
his place to-day, but a sense of overwhelming responsi¬ 
bility thrust at him like capsizing puffs of gale. If 
he made good for one hour this afternoon he might 
construe his success as an augury. He might make 
other dreams come true all along the future—and 
he stood trembling like an overwrought thorough¬ 
bred at the starting barrier. 



8 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“If you men don’t redeem yourselves this half,” 
dogmatized the head coach with desperate finality, 
“you’ll make a laughing stock of Harvard, of your¬ 
selves—and me . . . You’ll junk traditions 

that have been fought and sweated for through years 
and, as for myself, I don’t see how I can go on with 
football any longer. They may have some trick of¬ 
fensives. Don’t give them a chance to spring them— 
Smash into ’em and tear ’em open. Their defense 
oughtn’t to hold us. ” 

Then, clasping his blanket about him and with 
giddy spots swimming before his eyes, Barbour 
Sevens found himself trotting out with the squad 
onto the field where the drenching yellow of the sun 
dazzled him and floods of sound from twenty thou¬ 
sand throats submerged him. 

A young man with carroty hair who occupied a 
position of vantage in a central section of the stands 
realized that he was bei :g addressed by a stranger 
and looked inquiringly up. 

“You’ve got an empty seat each side of you,” de¬ 
clared the youth who had bent toward him—“and 
at ten o’clock this morning I ran all over town trying 
to get one more in this section. They told me every¬ 
thing was sold out—had been sold for days. ” 

The red-haired one grinned amiably. “Looks like 
they lied to you,” he made response. “Or else some¬ 
body took sick or died or got locked up. ” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


9 


“What I had in mind—I mean to say,” hazarded 
the other in some embarrassment, “ would you mind 
moving into the next seat and letting this lady and 
myself take the other two—unless somebody claims 
them? We’ve got two big hats in front of us. ” 

The red-haired young man grinned even more 
amiably than before. 

“Sure,” he exclaimed heartily. “Move right in and 
make yourselves at home. It’s all Jake with me 
and the game’s half over now.” 

A censorious eye might have marked that the 
hospitably minded onlooker was not dressed in the 
best of conservative taste, and a censorious ear might 
have found both his inflection and diction uncultivat¬ 
ed. His cut of raiment leaned emphatically toward 
the bizarre and his neck was shaved. Idiosyncrasies 
of costume may be condoned, but Brummel himself 
could not get by with a shaven neck. 

This young man’s face was freckled in consonance 
with the oriflamme of his hair, but his eyes were blue 
and large and they seemed pools of disarming appeal 
and angelic innocence. 

Just now they appeared more concerned with the 
audience than the contest itself. It was as though, 
in the vast and florid variety of that human kalei¬ 
doscope, the mind behind the eyes found a more 
palatable and gratifying food for thought than in the 
intricacies of this game which was to its players as 
serious as a crusade. 


10 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Another thought also dwelt with him. So long 
as he sat in the densely crowded tiers, flanked by 
empty spaces, he had felt vaguely and rather uneasily 
conspicuous—as if he were surrounded by a margin 
unshared by his fellows—and, since he knew a cir¬ 
cumstance connected with those two empty spaces, 
which was a secret of his own, this had given him 
concern. 

The young man with the carroty hair had needed 
only one seat and had only set out to procure one, 
but the gentleman whose pocket he had picked in the 
elbowing press just outside the gates had had three 
held together by one rubber band, so that, to all 
intents and purposes, they were inseparable. Red 
Ryan had deftly abstracted them from the pocket 
where they reposed, and though they constituted a 
plethora, it seemed inconsistent with the policy of 
wisdom to attempt a partial restitution. 

Now with the stubborn, sweating resolve and fe¬ 
rocity of bull-dogs in a pit, a crimson team and a blue- 
stockinged team plowed and battled and struggled 
on the white-striped green below, while from base to 
rim of the huge bowl of masonry reigned a babel and 
a pandemonium of gladiatorial exhortation. To 
Red Ryan it was all somewhat confusing. “What 
kick do they get out of it?” he silently questioned 
himself. “Now a coupla husky lads in the ring . . . 

or a fair field of selling-platers cornin’ home close- 
bunched—I could get that, but this Willy-boy 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


11 


lynching bee—it looks cuckoo to me. What’s it all 
about, anyhow?” 

He had not come idly, and he sat patient but un¬ 
thrilled. When the game ended, his own activities 
would begin. When the crowds surged down into the 
field, spilling and cascading over the walls of the 
stadium, and milling about in howling mobs—then 
and not till then would Red Ryan’s purpose in com¬ 
ing declare itself in action. 

Then he would mingle, howling dervish-like with 
the howling crowds, and if his gift of craftsmanship 
did not forsake him, he would emerge enriched in 
treasure and currency, self-endowed with the jewels, 
watches, and purses of the capitalist class. Mean¬ 
while, with the slightly disdainful aloofness of alien 
interests, he watched the strenuous entertainment of 
the capitalist class. 

If certain finesses of gridiron achievement escaped 
him, other observations he made more confidently. 
With the accuracy of a Maiden Lane appraiser, he 
placed valuation on the diamond in the scarf of the 
florid man one row forward, and even on the mesh 
bag of the pretty young lady whose rosy lips were so 
excitedly parted just to his left—the girl to whose 
escort he had gallantly surrendered his extra seats. 

Red Ryan was from the Middle West, but he had 
outgrown it. The bulls out there, both harness and 
plain clothes, had so embarrassed him with their 
close attentions that he had emigrated East, where his 



n 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


incognito was still intact. He stood now on the 
threshold of that larger world. 

The girl with the mesh bag came almost hysteri¬ 
cally to her feet and shrieked, if one may use for so 
musical an outburst of excitement such a prosaic 
descriptive. She was only a kid. Red reflected, but 
she sure was an eyeful! Now she stood frenziedly, 
yet not ungracefully, jumping up and down and 
waving a crimson pennant while her starry young 
eyes broke into a sparkle of naive delight. 

Also, she dropped her mesh bag. 

“Who is he?” demanded the girl, hoarse from her 
shouting, “Who is he?” 

“That,” her escort declared, his too-casual manner 
proclaiming him close of kin, “is Pudge Blackwell— 
I thought everybody knew Pudge.” His superior 
calm dropped suddenly away. “ By gracious, he made 
his gain, too—on the first down. Go on, Harvard!” 

“I don’t mean Pudge,” objected the girl imperious¬ 
ly. “Of course I know him . I mean the man who 
followed him through and broke up the tackle. He 
deserves all the credit.” 

“Oh,” the escort enlightened her absent-mindedly. 
“That’s Barb Sevens—a soph . . . first year 

on the team . . . looks like a comer, though, 

doesn’t he?” 

“He’s wonderful,” breathed the girl. “Ab-so- 
lutely!” 

Red Ryan retrieved and stored away in his coat 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


13 


pocket the forgotten mesh bag, but as he annexed this 
windfall he grunted contemptuously. 

“It’s a cinch there ain’t no valuables in it,” ke 
told himself. “Still, you never can tell.” 

The bedlamites grew more maniacal. The gyra¬ 
tions of the cheer-leaders became more fantastic, 
but Red Ryan, intuitive in gauging crowd psy¬ 
chology, recognized a slackened morale of weakened 
confidence and he grinned. 

“These Haw-vard rooters are kiddin’ themselves,” 
he shrewdly reflected. “Their steam roller’s gone 
blooey—and they’re bally-hooin’ to keep their noive 

99 

up. 

Perhaps he even laughed derisively, for the gentle¬ 
man with the diamond scarf pin which Red estimated 
roughly at two carats turned and glared truculently 
at him. 

Over the crimson-decked sectors of the stadium, 
as if in fulfilment of prophecy, settled an ominous 
tendency to quieting . . the quieting of 

premonition and gloom. The visitors, who had no 
moral right to menace so powerful a machine, had 
uncorked a bottle of effervescent surprises. With 
only a few minutes left to play, they were holding 
like a Macedonian phalanx. They were still power¬ 
less to score, of course, but their cup of glory would 
brim over if, without scoring, they could hold their 
mighty adversaries to a like ineffectualness. 

The sunset sky glowed through the western open- 


14 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ings of the stadium masonry and the Crimsons, stung 
to a last, superhuman effort, braced every nerve to 
the tautness of its breaking point. As if driven be¬ 
yond their own powers by the forces of tradition they 
went, from centre-field to three-yard line, battering 
their way in short but consistent gains, and the ball— 
their ball—lay close to the chalked frontier of victory. 

Between them and a touchdown lay that narrowed 
interval of tramped sod and a human wall that had 
given back doggedly, stiffening as it went, until now, 
like human mortar, rigidly set, it, likewise, braced 
itself for final ordeal. 

Between Harvard’s determination and its achieve¬ 
ment, or its frustration, lay also two minutes of 
playing time, rigidly guarded and limited by official 
stop-watches. The spirits of the home rooters 
blazed up in capricious hope from their ashes. Again 
they were on their feet, amid soaring volumes of deep- 
throated thunder. 

Barbour Sevens, rankling as though the disgrace 
of the scoreless board had been all his own, clenched 
his teeth in a grimed, bloodied, and sweating face, 
while he crouched with the tigerish ferocity of a 
single purpose. His nerves were quivering and his 
pulses hammering. All consciousness was merged 
and fused into one fiery passion—eagerness and the 
determination of eagerness- 

The forces were hurled together in new collision, 
the retaining wall of flesh bent back a little, a very 




ALIAS RED RYAN 15 

little, but no breaches were rammed through its 
integrity. 

Once more—if they held as well—and the ball 
would go to the visitors on downs. 

“Last down and one yard to gain!” 

There came again the staccato barking of signals 
and Sevens knew that the play was to make its assault 
around his end! The lines crouched panting close to 
the earth, the ball was snapped, and Harvard leaped 
to a single impulse. There was the thud of human 
impact, the hoarse gasping breath of struggle, the 
straining of massed conflict—and then a deafening 
roar from the compassing walls of the stadium. The 
ball had gone over for a touchdown! 

Pandemonium, chaos, indescribable babel of horns 
and whistles and above them all the solid artillery roar 
of countless throats. Barbour Sevens straightened 
up, reeling, gasping, but translated to a seventh 
heaven of happiness. There could not be more than 
a few seconds of play left. Harvard would kick the 
goal—and then-! He could hardly stand, but he 

rocked on his feet jubilantly. 

Then fell the devastating bolt of calamity. 

At first it couldn’t be grasped. It was too in¬ 
credible—but the sharp whistle-blow, the whispered 
consultation, and then the grim-faced finality of the 
referee as he took the ball and began pacing back 
five yards, told the story with a merciless baldness. 

Harvard had been penalized. Harvard had for- 




16 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


feited the touchdown and the ball. The play would 
be resumed with the visitors in possession, five yards 
away. 

Then in absolute corroboration of these disastrous 
and impossible things came the curt verdict of 
officialdom. 

“ Harvard’s right end was offside. Middletown’s 
ball.” 

Sevens was the right end. The penalty that had 
robbed Harvard of spectacular triumph in the final 
and conclusive minute of struggle lay squarely at his 
door. Disgrace engulfed him. He stumbled back, 
sobbing, with his body racked and shaken in spasm 
after spasm of anguish. He knew nothing else clear¬ 
ly until the whistle blew and then he threw himself 
flat where he stood, clawing at the mud. 

Unequipped with such erudition as clarified the 
situation to his understanding, Red Ryan failed to 
grasp its full and tragic meaning. 

“It gets by me, ” he muttered to himself as he shook 
his head in mystification. “A likely lad in the prize 
ring ain’t supposed to sob himself to death because 
he only gets a draw when he claimed a decision. He 
climbs through the ropes and plasters a piece of 
beefsteak over his bum lamp an’ that’s that—but 
these highbrow sports lays down on the ground an’ 
kicks an’screams. It gets by me. ” 

His position enabled Red to reach the field with 
the first breaker of the human tide that spilled over 



ALIAS RED RYAN 17 

I 

like dark water from a bursted reservoir. Just be¬ 
fore him was the gentleman with the two-carat scarf 
pin, and both found themselves drawn by the eddy¬ 
ing currents into a narrowing circle about the group 
of sweating and begrimed warriors in red. One of 
these seemed to have become suddenly bereft of 
reason, and to be in the hands of volunteers who 
sought to restrain his ravings. 

With one forearm flung across his face and his 
body shaken by sobs. Sevens was fighting off the 
men who sought to comfort him; to wrap him in a 
blanket against the raw evening chill; to set him 
on his feet and lead him away. 

; In the excitement that seethed like a swarm of bees 
about that axis, Red Ryan did more than add his 
voice to the chorus of volunteered and futile comfort¬ 
ing. With a dexterity that bespoke a finished art, 
he freed the diamond scarf pin from its fastenings at 
the gentleman’s stout throat, and, opening the clasp 
of the mesh bag in his pocket, slipped it safely into 
that receptacle. 

i Then, as they had dragged the figure of the still 
raving Sevens to his feet, someone forcibly threw 
an overcoat over his shoulders and several hands 
reached out to button it in place. This was ap¬ 
parently because the young man, in his bereft state 
of mind, could not be persuaded to keep a blanket 
about him. In these offices of gratuitous helpfulness, 
Red Ryan charitably collaborated. He laid ready 




18 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

hands on the distracted Sevens, along with others who 
had better right, and included himself in the escort 
in which was also numbered the gentleman whom he 
had just robbed. 

In this fashion he could make more rapid progress 
toward the gates—and it was at the congested 
channels of the exits that Red hoped to reap his full 
harvest. 

But as he was progressing in this fashion, none too 
rapidly through the pressed humanity, Red looked to 
the side, and had his features not been well schooled, 
they must have betrayed a deep and surprised con¬ 
cern. As it was, a scowling shadow darkened the 
clear innocence of his eyes, for a few paces away were 
two men, whose glances were on him, and one of the 
faces was known to him of old. In that room on the 
second floor of the City Hall, in Louisville, Kentucky, 
where the Chief of Detectives conducts his inquiries. 
Red and this man had held sundry conferences and 
none of them had been of Red’s seeking. “Wot 
th’ hell,” he growled now, without sound. “Wot 
th’ hell’s old Danny Maher doin’ here?” 

What Danny Maher was doing at the instant was 
speaking low into the ear of his companion, whom 
Red rightly guessed to be a local member of the 
same craft as Danny. 

“Keep an eye on the sorrel-topped lad,” he sug¬ 
gested. “Him that’s helping carry off the football 
lad. He’ll bear watching. ” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


19 


“Never saw him before,” commented the Boston 
detective. “What is he? A common dip?” 

“He’s a dip, but he ain’t no common one,” replied 
the Louisvillian. “He’s one of the cleverest kids 
that ever worked the Middle West and South. I 
wouldn’t put it past him to have some sparklers in 
his clothes right now . . . but it’s at the gate 

he meant to work fastest—until he saw me.” 

Maher spoke thoughtfully and rather in the spirit 
of tribute to ability than with any rancor of hostility 
in his voice. “He started out as a gay-cat ahead of 
a yegg outfit, and developed into the headiest 
pickpocket we ever had down our way. We’ve 
never been able to send him over the road for it, but 
we’re pretty sure he’s done some high-class second- 
story work, too.” 

“Want to pick him up?” inquired the local bull, 
and Maher shook his head. 

“I don’t know of any call that’s been sent out for 
him lately, but since he’s here it’s just as well for 
you to know his face. I’ll send you the dope on him 
and his Bertillon record when I get back. It might 
come in handy some time.” 



CHAPTER II 


N ONE of that conversation was overheard by 
Red Ryan, yet in his imagination he could 
accurately divine its trend of text and treat¬ 
ment, and a deep gloom enveloped him. 

“If I was this Willy-boy,” he made mental observa¬ 
tion, “I reckon I’d lay right down in the dirt an’ sob.” 

The day’s work, with all its promise, lying ahead, 
was stultified. What he had so far gathered in was 
only a reminder of greater possibilities—and now 
even those beginnings became a menace to his safety. 
If these plain clothes bulls decided to “pick him up,” 
as was the informal way of such gentry as they with 
such other gentry as he, he must above all be found 
empty-handed. That “ice” nipped out of the scarf 
was treasure trove and its abandonment cost him a 
pang, yet he did not hesitate. With a dexterous 
gesture, and with a face that betrayed no emotion, 
Red slipped the mesh bag and its contents into the 
side pocket of the overcoat that draped itself loosely 
over the shoulders of the sobbing Harvard end. 
Then, as the group neared the turning to the locker 
rooms, the carroty-haired youth detached himseJJ 
and proceeded toward the exit gates. 

20 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


£1 


There, when the detectives arrived, they found 
him standing reflectively and with all the disarming 
seeming of innocence. Flight appeared far from his 
thoughts as, with a nod from the Kentuckian, the 
official pair approached him. 

“Hello, Red,” accosted Maher affably. “Meet 
Mr. Dennis . . . Mr. Dennis is a headquarters 

man here in Boston. ” 

“Pleased to meet yer,’’said Red, with a certain 
coolness of reserve, and the Bostonian inquired, 
“ What was the name? I didn’t get it. ” 

“Which one do you go by now, Red?” inquired 
Danny, still affably. “Red Ryan’s the one we 
generally use on the blotter—but the monikers change 
from time to time, don’t they. Red?” 

“Red Ryan’ll do,” responded the youth equably. 
“Nobody ain’t got nothin’ on me now, an’ I don’t 
need no monikers.” 

“Oh, by the way, Red,” it was Maher who spoke, 
“I’m not accusin’ you, y’understand, but you’re in a 
crowd an’ you used to work fast in crowds—maybe 
-?” he broke off on an upward inflection of inquiry. 

The young man nodded. He even grinned a little, 
since some informal justification was what he himself 
just now considered prudent. 

“Frisk me,” he invited. “Go as far as yer like.” 

Maher “frisked” him with a swift but efficient 
touch of searching fingers. He realized that the 
pickpocket had not been caught red-handed this 



22 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


time, and his nod was, for the time being, a clean bill 
of health. So having passed through the customs, 
at the cost of a sacrifice play as it were, Ryan 
was free to proceed and he proceeded. Already the 
crest of the crowd wave had flowed by, and with it the 
crest of his own opportunity. He dared not even 
linger at the fringes, and his day was spoiled. 

“Hell!” he growled wrathfully, as for a moment 
the innocent eyes darkened into a fury of guile. 
“Hell! Now I’ve got ter blow ther damn burg.” 

By certain nightmare progressions that stood out 
in his memory only as lurid and tortured dreams. 
Sevens had passed the hour and a half that took him 
through shower, rubdown, and dressing, and finally 
left him mercifully alone in his own room. He sat 
there now with the light turned on, staring ahead out 
of eyes dazed and suffering. He had in the very 
fever of over-eagerness betrayed Harvard, and to 
him the disgrace which the head coach had expounded 
was actual and crushing. This was the largest world 
he had known in his nineteen years of life, and to-day 
this world had tested him, proving his failure. Op¬ 
portunity had come to him and he had spoiled it. 
His augury of future triumph had burned into the 
ashen and dismal conviction of predestined failure. 
Overwrought, bruised, and exhausted, his tragedy 
was real. No tempest of the future could shake 
him more actually than he was just now shaken. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


23 


Serious-minded from a childhood surrounded with 
drab economies, he did not expect opportunity to 
come to him radiantly or often . . . and a 

great one thrown away spelled despair. 

As he sat inert by the book-littered table of his 
room, a brisk rap sounded on his door—a sound 
which he did not answer because it failed to penetrate 
the blanketing fog of his intensive misery. Then 
the door opened and a big-bodied, cheery-eyed young 
fellow let himself breezily in. He stood for a moment 
looking at the hulking despondency of the seated 
figure, then came over and clapped a hand on its 
shoulder. 

“Buck up, old hoss,” exclaimed this new arrival. 
“You were*just out of luck . . . Your crime 

was only that you snapped into it a tenth of a second 
too quick.” 

At the touch and the sound of the voice Sevens 
started violently, and then with a churlishness that 
was wholly foreign to his normal character, he 
growled: 

“I don’t want to talk to anybody. I want to be 
left alone.” 

“Forget it,” retorted the other. “I came to get 
my best overcoat. I’m going out to a party to-night 
—and I need it. ” 

“Your overcoat?” Sevens repeated the words in a 
dazed voice and then, as if groping through the mists 
of lethargic half-dreams, he nodded dully and pointed 


24 ALIAS RED RYAN 

to a worn couch where the coat had been flung 
down. 

“There it is, I guess,” he said in a monotone. 
“I didn’t know whose it was or where it came .from. 
When I came in here I— ’ ’ He pressed a hand rough¬ 
ly across his forehead with a passionate simplicity 
of gesture, as if seeking to clear away cobwebs from 
before his eyes—“I seemed to be carrying it over 
my arm.” 

“I put it on you on the field,” Dicky Stafford 
explained. “You were sweating and all in—and you 
wouldn’t keep your blanket around you. ” 

As the visitor lifted the coat something fell with a 
delicate clatter from its side pocket to the floor—a 
girl’s mesh bag. 

“What-ho?” he demanded with his incorrigible 
cheerfulness of booming voice, as he picked it up 
and turned it in his hand. “You say you don’t 
remember anything about this coat, and yet since 
you’ve had possession if it you've stored a lady’s 
treasure in its pocket. ” 

Sevens shook an incurious head, somewhat im¬ 
patiently. 

“I never saw that thing before,” he answered 
shortly. “You must have put it there yourself.” 

“I tell you the pocket was empty when I put the 
coat on you. ” Stafford’s voice became more serious 
in its perplexity. “I say, you were pretty well off 
your nut when I saw you last, Barb. You don’t 


ALIAS RED RYAN 25 

suppose you fell to picking pockets in your aberra¬ 
tion, do you?’* 

“Don’t be an ass,” growled Sevens moodily. 
“Take your coat and your bag—and yourself— 
away. I tell you, I want to be alone.” 

“Grouse all you like,” replied Stafford affably, 
“but there’s a mystery here and between us we’ve 
got to dope it out. We must open this thing up and 
try to identify its owner.” 

Sevens sagged deeper into his chair and sat staring 
moodily ahead while his visitor opened the bag and 
shook out on the table its little pile of contents. 

“ Great Jehosephat K. Jones! ” he exploded violent¬ 
ly. “What’s this? The great Koohinoor diamond?” 
A grin broadened on his sunburned face and then 
his roaring laughter filled the room. 

“It looks to me, old son,” he announced, “as if 
you not only picked a lady’s pocket, but as if the 
lady, herself, was a pickpocket. This isn’t any 
woman’s bauble. It belongs to a he-Croesus. Let’s 
see, here are cards, too. ‘Miss Hope Halleck’ and, 
ah, here’s a note!” 

“I tell you,” reiterated Sevens in petulant stub¬ 
bornness, “I’m not interested. Do me the favour 
to take those things away and play with them some¬ 
where else.” 

Stafford looked quickly up from his engrossed read¬ 
ing, and his tone altered to a quality that broke 
through the other’s crust of self-centred indifference. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


26 

“I don’t give a hoot in hades whether you’re in¬ 
terested or not,” he declared incisively. “The 
question now is whether you’re honest or not. ” 

“Honest!” The dead torpor of Barbour’s eyes 
livened into the sharper light of quick anger. “I’d 
be careful, Stafford, if I were you.” 

“Ah, that’s better,” smiled the visitor. “Listen, 
I’ve read this note. This purse belongs to a girl 
named Hope Halleck. It seems that she and her 
Aunt Abbie—surname not stated—came up from 
Cape Cod to see the game . . . They’re 

stopping for one night at the Copley . . . That 

girl will probably be walking the floor about that pin. 
It’s worth slathers of money—so it’s up to you to beat 
it to the Copley and set her troubled mind at rest. ” 

“Go yourself,” snapped Sevens, “I’m not respon¬ 
sible. It’s your coat. ” 

“It had empty pockets when I draped it over your 
drooping shoulders. I’ll swear to that. Besides, 
I told you I had a date . I’m late now.” 

“ Call a messenger, then. ” 

“A messenger!” Stafford snorted contemptuous¬ 
ly. “You can’t decently trust valuables like that 
to an unknown messenger. I’m going now and 
unless you’re a crook, you’ll be hotfooting it to the 
Copley inside the half-hour. So long.” 

“Hold on, Staff!” There was wild appeal in the 
voice, but the visitor knew his man. He knew that 
some such mission as this was needed to drag him 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


27 


out of introspective glooming, and he had taken up 
his coat and flung himself from the room. 

For five minutes Barbour Sevens sat gazing at the 
bag where it lay on the table, then with an effort and 
a sudden realization of aching bodily weariness, he 
dragged himself up and brushed his hair and got his 
coat and hat. 

In his present sensitiveness he thought the desk 
clerk at the hotel was saying to himself, “That’s the 
guy that threw away the game for Harvard,” so he 
glared truculently at that inoffensive official. 
“Please send my name up to Miss Hope Halleck,” 
he directed shortly. “She doesn’t know me but tell 
her I found a bag she lost at the stadium this after¬ 
noon, and that I’m here to return it. ” 

Then he paced moodily up and down before the 
desk until an elevator door opened, and he saw a 
girl and a middle-aged lady being led toward him 
by a bellhop. Automatically he moved forward to 
meet them and then, for a brief, dazzled moment, he 
forgot his melancholy. 

The girl was not more than fifteen or sixteen but 
with her came the blooming loveliness of apple or¬ 
chards in flower. Upon Barbour Sevens, whose 
thoughts had all been black and despairing, she burst 
like fragrance and a healing spirit of delight—and 
abruptly he remembered that her name, as revealed 
in the note, was Hope! He had fancied some such 
girl as this, dominating that world of dreams upon 


28 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


which this afternoon had seemed to shut the door— 
but the portraiture of his imagination had lacked 
colour, he decided, because the reality was richer. 

The older lady was charming, too, though he felt 
that with the half recognition which one accords to 
the appropriateness of an unobtrusive background 
in a picture, whose foreground proclaims itself in 
outstanding beauty. 

The nineteen-year-old heart of Barbour Sevens, 
unsurfeited with emotional feasting, was not immune. 
It missed a beat or two, then pounded into palpita¬ 
tion. 

The girl came forward, her cheeks blushing. 

“You are Mr. Sevens?” said Aunt Abbie gracious¬ 
ly. “Hope spoke of seeing you play this afternoon.” 

“I’m the fellow that chucked the game for Har¬ 
vard, ” Sevens found himself making bitter confession 
and he knew that his face was burning brick red. 

“I thought you were wonderful,'’ declared the 
girl. “All you did was to get into the scrimmage 
the fraction of a second too soon. ” Suddenly Bar¬ 
bour Sevens wanted to kneel down and worship her. 
His crime became almost a virtue! 

“I found this bag in the pocket of a coat that a 
friend put around me when they were dragging me 
off the field,” he announced, producing his excuse for 
being there. “A note gave your name and stopping- 
place, and I knew you’d be worried—especially about 
the diamond.” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


29 


“The diamond!” both girl and the woman echoed 
in perplexity. “But there wasn’t any diamond.” 

“Look for yourselves, ” suggested the young man, 
“I’m certain it’s there, and I’m dead sure I didn’t 
put it there. How any of these things got into that 
pocket is mysterious enough.” 

So once more an investigation was held and the pin 
was examined. 

“I never saw this scarf-pin before, ” observed Aunt 
Abbie, with a whimsical smile. “The bag belongs to 
Hope and its loss distressed her . . . But the 

diamond . . . that is quite a separate puzzle. 

Mr. Sevens, your hunt for its owner isn’t ended yet.” 

“I never knew diamonds just to—emerge out of 
empty pockets before,” murmured Sevens in be¬ 
wilderment, then his eyes met those of the girl and for 
some reason the blood flooded into both his cheeks 
and hers. 

A sudden confusion, new and delightful, over¬ 
whelmed him and he found himself turning to the 
elder lady with honest-eyed eagerness. 

“I’m afraid it’s an impertinence, Ma’am. An 
accident brought me here, but I hope ... I 
hope I can see you—both of you—again. ” 

In a cafe not far from the Copley at the same 
hour, Mr. Maher and Mr. Dennis were discoursing 
over their cigars and coffee concerning matters both 
social and professional. The Louisville detective 




30 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


had come North with extradition papers and, by a 
midnight train, must start South again taking a 
prisoner with him. 

“I’m glad it just happened that I could give you a 
line on Red Ryan,” observed the Kentuckian. 
“He’s not a big fish, but he’s a clever one, and he may 
grow into a crook that you can’t afford to overlook. ” 

“I’ll not be after forgetting him,” smiled Dennis, 
“but my guess is that since our little conversation 
this afternoon, he’ll move on.” 

“He’s a queer one,” mused Maher, in a mood of 
reminiscence. “The newspaper boys down home 
have turned out columns of copy about him from 
time to time. They’ve built up a kind of public 
sympathy for him that a crook oughtn’t to have.” 

“Sympathy? How do you mean?” 

“It started some time back,’’resumed the narrator, 
“when this lad tried to pull a porch-climbing job at a 
country house back home. He was easing himself 
into a second-story window just as a five-year-old 
kid was coming out . . . The kid was walking 

in his sleep . . . and he walked straight into 

Red’s arms.” 

“And Red was nabbed?” 

“Yes . . . nabbed half way up the side of 

the house—but the kid’s father couldn’t see anything 
to it but an act of providence, and the kid’s father 
had just been elected mayor . . . There 

wasn’t no arrest in that case.” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


31 


“How did it get out then?” 

“It was too good to keep and the father spilled it 
after a while to a City Hall reporter. The reporter 
saw a story in it and smeared it for heart interest, 
see? Then other stories came along. I reckon most 
of ’em were fakes ground out on days when local 
news was scarce. Anyhow, this Ryan lad got the 
name of being a crook that always started out to pull 
some man-size crime, and always ended up by doing 
somebody a good turn. Folks christened him the 
‘fairy-godfather’—an’ him doin’ his damnedest to be 
a felon. ” 

“ It won’t get him much around here, ” declared the 
Boston detective. “Crooks is crooks with us.” 

“I’m bound to say he took that kind of boosting 
to be a knock himself, ” admitted Danny. “ It made 
him sore as a crab to have his pals hang nicknames 
like Santa Claus and the Angel Child on him when 
he was pulling brainy stunts right along, and he 
wanted to be took serious.” 

“Here’s looking, ” commented the Bostonian, “and 
as for us, we’ll take him serious.” 

Just then Sevens was leaving the Copley, and 
through the rack of his despair were stealing half- 
understood influences of comfort, like scraps of sun¬ 
light through fog. Recently crushed dreams began 
to struggle toward renewed life and toward a vision 
which persisted. In his vest pocket he carried a 
diamond pin and, before going back to Cambridge, 


32 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


he turned his steps toward a newspaper office and 
inserted an advertisement in the lost-and-found 
column. 

That night he slept, but the clouds descended 
again on the morrow when, in scathing comment, the 
sporting writers pilloried him afresh. The inherent 
weakness of the Harvard machine was exposed to 
general derision, but upon the offense of the right 
end they fixed as upon a tangible target and there 
they centred their fire. 

It was while he was deep in this overnight publicity 
that Sevens rose again to answer a knock on his door, 
and found a gentleman there in a fur-lined overcoat 
who held in his hand a clipping from the lost-and- 
found column of a morning paper. 

The visitor took in at a glance the papers all 
open at the football pages, and without the preface 
of formal greeting, he broke out with violence—and a 
stuttering defect of speech. 

“You’re reading the post mortems. D-don’t 

d-do it! These damned scribblers have n-nothing 
better to do than p-pick the bones of their betters. 
I saw you play, and no man on the team showed b- 
better stuff.” 

A half hour later the gentleman rose from an 
easy chair. 

“I’ve enjoyed this t-talk with you—and I’ve got 
b-back my pin,” he declared. “Sorry you won’t ac¬ 
cept the reward, and yet I understand how you feel. ” 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


33 


He moved toward the door and wheeled abruptly, 
speaking curtly. 

“In business it’s a mighty good fault for a man to 
play the game too hard . . . I’d be glad to 

have you keep in touch with me from time to time.” 
He drew a business card from his purse and held it 
out. “I shouldn’t wonder at all if we could make a 
place for you at our shop when you get through here, ’’ 
he said. 

Sevens stood still after the door had closed, holding 
the card in his hand. Yesterday he had met a girl 
of whom he had dreamed all night. To-day a busi¬ 
ness man had spoken overtures—and both of these 
things had grown out of a mystery. 

“ I wonder where that bag came from? ” he sudden¬ 
ly demanded of the closed door. “ Whoever arranged 
it was a darned good fellow and I’m for him strong. ” 

Into the club-car of a New York train that Sunday 
afternoon a red-haired youth glanced as he made his 
way from the day coach in which he was himself 
travelling to the diner. In view of his fortuitous 
meeting with the Louisville detective. Red Ryan 
was abandoning Boston for New York. He had 
come East reasonably well heeled and had augmented 
rather than dispersed his capital by the way. “A 
guy’s got to make a good front in these big burgs 
here where the game isn’t any hick proposition,” 
he mentally remarked, “and ridin’ the rods or sneak¬ 
in’ into side-door Pullmans is cheap stuff.” Now as 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


he passed through the club-car, he recognized a face. 
It was that of the gentleman who yesterday after¬ 
noon had mingled with him in the crowd about the 
weeping football player and whose diamond he, 
Red, had prestidigitated from the scarf of one to the 
pocket of the other. Yet now, to the disgust of the 
observer, the fur-collared gentleman who leaned 
back in his chair, smoking an expensive cigar, once 
more wore the diamond pin glittering in his cravat. 
It was a different scarf, but undeniably the same 
stone in the same setting. 

For an instant resentment and temptation surged 
across the soul of Red Ryan. There was a smug 
self-satisfaction on the somewhat heavy face of this 
other man. His squarishly blocked head and 
straight mouth were such as betokened a stubborn 
and opinionated self-conceit. This was, by signs 
which the predatory critic was quick to read, a stupid 
man who believed himself clever; a slow-witted fellow 
who was doubly sure of his own keenness. Just 
now he was looking particularly self-satisfied, as 
though his recovery of lost goods had come from his 
own resourceful endeavours. Yet all he had done 
was to answer a lost-and-found ad. and probably 
pay the heavy impost of a reward. Red had also 
seen that ad. He had reluctantly refrained from 
answering it himself and now he reluctantly re¬ 
frained from a more ironic act than that, stealing 
it the second time. He knew that he could do 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


35 


it, and the accomplishment appealed strongly to his 
sardonic sense of humour. That impulse he strangled 
in the interests of a more long-sighted prudence. 
Ahead of Red lay the world with all its opportunities, 
and ahead of him also lay that reef, which unless 
avoided would wreck him “up the river.” At 
another time and place it might be ventured, but not 
in a Pullman car. 

Yet Tom Shell with his mink-lined great-coat and 

• 

his ostentatiously large brilliant, was in a fashion also 
the carrier of a false front. He was less the magnate 
than he appeared. He could wear that coat because 
it had cost him less than it would have cost another. 
The company whose name appeared on his business 
card was a great one dealing in furs. It was one 
which had romantic ramifications in the far Arctic 
where its agents bought in the pelts that adventur¬ 
ous and lonely men incurred risks to trap and market, 
but Tom Shell’s voice in that company, with its 
Fifth Avenue shop, and its several warehouses, was 
not a voice of complete command. Beverly Brothers, 
Furriers, was an old concern, touched in other days 
with something of the romance of its greater colleague, 
the Hudson’s Bay Company. Now it was practically 
a one-man power ruled rigidly by old Silas Beverly. 
Tom Shell had assiduously bent himself to studying 
old Silas, who must some day pass on. He had 
undertaken to absorb old Silas’s theories with a 
mirror’s fidelity; so to mould himself to the mental 


36 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


stature of his chief that eventually Silas would think 

i 

of him as the one man who could carry on as his own 
successor. Meanwhile, Tom Shell’s self-satisfaction 
caused him to dress, to act, and to talk to others as 
though he had already attained his end of full chief¬ 
tainship. 

When the train pulled into Grand Central station, 
Shell alighted jauntily, followed by a red-top carrying 
his pigskin bag. At the gates there was some crowd¬ 
ing and an irritating delay. Red Ryan, who once 
more found himself standing close to the fur-coated 
figure, bore this annoyance with philosophy, but 
Tom fumed. Having gained the street. Shell took a 
taxi and hurried to his apartment. There he decided 
upon a bath before dinner—and when he undressed 
himself his face turned apoplectic and he stuttered 
versatile profanities. In his scarf there was no 
diamond. The pin, with the guard he had belatedly 
attached, remained in place, to be sure—but its 
upper end was cut clean as is a strand of wire with 
clippers, and no jewel adorned it. 



CHAPTER III 


T HOUGH almost two years had passed since 
that day when Barbour Sevens had been off¬ 
side in scrimmage, no other day had stood 
out in such strong relief of memory. Upon it he had 
tasted the first chagrin and self-accusation that had 
ever charred his outlook on life with despair. Upon 
it, too, he had encountered the unheralded arrival of 
love, a love upon which a hungry imagination was 
ready to seize, for which his youth was fallow. Time 
had told him that this suddenly born sentiment was 
no ephemeral thing but that it had come to stay. 
It remained with him in ascending growth even when 
the bitterness of the other thing had softened some¬ 
what in a receding perspective—softened yet left its 
scar. 

It was June now. The days at Cambridge lay 
behind—and ahead, with the summer vacation inter¬ 
vening. A week of simple and uneventful days on 
Cape Cod was ending, simple and uneventful to the 
men and women he met along the elm-shaded roads 
and by the salt-meadows, but rich in magic to himself. 
A gray old house with sweeping roof lines of 

weathered shingles, flanked by ancient and gnarled 

37 


38 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


apple trees and silver-leaves, had bestowed on him 
its hospitality, and from its windows his eyes had 
looked across green slopes to broken stretches of 
unbelievably blue waters. 

Here with simplicity and even with an eye bent 
on economy, as the sailor’s eye is bent on weather 
signs, he had found the charm of cultivated life—the 
life over which Aunt Abbie presided, to which Hope 
contributed fragrance and music and miracle, and to 
which Hope’s little sister Faith, a pigtailed miniature 
of herself, offered the sprightly afflictions of mischief. 

He would remember that visit and take its hours 
away in his memory and his heart—the long grass 
waving in the breeze that came salt-laden off the sea; 
the scent of the honeysuckle; the feel of the blue water 
into which they dived, and above all the light in 
Hope’s eyes. 

Now he was going away, and as Hope walked with 
him through a twisting path between bayberry and 
pines they stopped to watch the overhead scampering 
of a red squirrel—and a silence fell upon them. The 
sun was setting under scraps of flawdess blue, seen 
through rents in the green, and it was dyeing the 
western sky into gorgeousness. 

Sevens started to speak and broke off. His courses 
at Harvard had given him no words for making 
articulate the impulses that had leaped in him. Hope 
was standing so near that his arm, had it been 
bold enough, might have circled her, and he fell 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


39 


suddenly to trembling. Her face turned toward him 
and her deep eyes became suddenly wide and full of 
light—a light not reflected only from the sunset but 
shining from within. At once emboldened and made 
timid, but above all young and intense, the boy 
burst out fervently: “ If I had anything to offer you, 

Hope—Great God, dearest, what things I would say 
to you!” 

“You have one thing”—her voice was low and 
vibrant, and it seemed to intoxicate him to a mad¬ 
ness of joy—“that no one else can ever offer me.” 

“I have only a love that’s all of me, ” he broke out 
vehemently. “And love is a thing lots of fellows will 
offer you—fellows who have all the rest besides.” 

“You’re the only one who has your love to offer,” 
she told him. “And that’s the only love I want.” 

Then his arms went out and closed, and he felt her 
lips against his, and the sky and sea and woods be¬ 
came their playthings, and the world their exclusive 

empire. 

Presently she said, “But you have another year 
at college yet and after that you have to get 
started in business. We’ll have to wait a long time, 
won t wer 

“No,” he declared with a sudden decisiveness that 
made his well-shaped features go at a breath from 
boyishness to mature responsibility; this is my 

last year at Harvard.” 

“But there’s still your degree, Barb- 99 




40 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“I’m through college, nonetheless. To-morrow I 
go to New York and see Mr. Shell. He’s dropped in 
on me once or twice when he’s been in Boston on 
business. There’s an opening there for me whenever 
I’m ready—not a big thing but a start—and I’m 
ready now. I’ve got to get my life launched, dearest 
—now that I know what course I’m trying to shape. ” 

“But I don’t want you to break off-’’ 

“I’m not breaking off, dearest, I’m breaking in— 
breaking into life—and with what I know now I’m 
not afraid. I’m going to Beverly Brothers and 
they’re going to call me ‘our Mr. Sevens’, but before 
we end up, Hope dear, it’s going to be ‘our Beverly 
Brothers’.” 


Barbour Sevens was looking down a vista of some 
elapsed years on that time now in the small New 
York apartment in which he and Hope had begun 
their life together. 

The place had been big enough for the roots and 
branches of love to spread and blossom and grow 
strong. It had served for the testing of a vision and 
the fulfilment of a dream, but even Paradise was not 
large enough or secure enough, to remain uninvaded. 

This morning the invasion had come to Sevens, 
though Hope had known of it sooner, and it had 
poisoned the air until Barbour Sevens felt himself 
strangled. 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


41 


The blow had fallen as he had risen from the break¬ 
fast table, and Hope had risen with him and hesitated 
in something she was about to say. 

She had hesitated only a moment, and then she 
had spoken with an assumption of casual matter-of- 
factness. 

“ The doctor won’t come to-day, ” she had told him. 
“My bronchitis has been stubborn but he doesn’t 
have to look in on me so often now. ” 

“Thank God, ’’ exclaimed Sevens. “And now that 
you are on the mend I can admit how badly scared I 
was. ” 

She smiled, and there was a wistfulness in her 
eyes that he did not miss. Suddenly he drew nearer 
and took her in his arms. 

“Were you frightened too, dear?” he asked ten¬ 
derly. 

She shook her head, and then, forcing her words, 
she went on: 

“Dr. Maxwell wants me to see Doctor Galvin.” 

Galvin! That was enough. Galvin’s name was 
a synonym for exploration into deeper troubles. 
Galvin was the big lung specialist, and Sevens found 
himself gulping with a sudden paralysis of panic at 
his heart. He hadn’t been prepared for that. He 
opened his lips and they closed again without words. 
It seemed that the world was reeling to the calamity 
of earthquake and volcano. 

When a half hour later he took his hat from its peg 


42 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


in the hall, he felt that he was a man who had under¬ 
gone such change as made him a stranger to himself. 

As he trudged along Fifth Avenue later in the day, 
in a rain that was half snow, Barbour Sevens flinched 
from the facing of fact and a wave of bitterness 
possessed him. The shoulders that had been broad 
enough to wear the crimson sweater at Harvard had 
rounded to a hated, clerical stoop. Tom Shell was 
largely responsible, he reflected, with that smoulder 
of resentment in his heart which in some tempera¬ 
ments makes anarchists. Shell had not only set his, 
Barbour’s, feet on the first rung of the ladder, but had 
kept them chained there. Tom Shell, who had 
seemed his benefactor in the beginning, had develop¬ 
ed into a task master who had exploited his energy 
and his vitality without due recompense. 

Sevens had entered on his business life with the 
keen zest of a thoroughbred colt fighting for his head 
and full of the eagerness of contest, but looking back, 
he saw that he had been thought of and used only as 
a draft animal that must set its shoulders to heavy 
harness. 

These were not new reflections, yet to-day they 
presented themselves before his mind with a sharp- 
cut clarity which they had not before possessed and 
focussed themselves out of chronic vagueness into the 
fixed shape of an issue. 

Those afflictions that go with us, growing almost 
imperceptibly from day to day and from month to 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


43 


month, have that trick of standing forth, suddenly 
acute. There comes the time when the shoe-sole 
that has been gradually wearing thin reveals a hole; 
when the hair that has needed trimming seems to 
become, all at once, unendurably .shaggy and un¬ 
kempt. There comes a day when the situation that 
has seemed to belong to the future must be squarely 
met in the present, and to Barbour Sevens, this 
seemed such a day. 

The news that had shaken his personal world gave 
poignancy *to this reviewing of his business life and 
this admission of its failure. 

He had cut short his university course to come to 
Beverly Brothers at the invitation of Tom Shell, 
and from the first Tom Shell had taken him under 
the wing of paternalism. 

Barbour grinned sardonically and bitterly now as 
he looked back, with the perspective of results, on 
those first days. Then, despite his own unassuming 
good nature, there had been heart-burnings in the 
office and talk among older employees of “Tom 
Shell’s pet.” 

Then old Silas Beverly had died and Shell, who had 
played the “sedulous ape” through these years of 
studying his whims, stood in his stead. It was the 
position toward which he had built, this finding him¬ 
self at the head of the concern and answerable only 
to its board of directors. 

“Now,” Barbour Sevens had thought, “my op- 


44 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


portunity has come.” To-day he remembered how 
that thought had intruded itself even while he, with 
his fellow workmen, had stood by the grave where 
the old chief *was being buried. 

“Yet if I could think of my own prospects as the 
funeral ritual was being recited,” he mused with a 
grimly set jaw, “I thought of them solemnly enough 
and in terms of the service I meant to give. And 
I gave the service.” 

He had given the service. He had given it so well 
and with such a singleness of purpose that Tom Shell 
had been only a figure-head and he himself the 
originator of'policies. In the old days, Shell had been 
something of a sycophant to old Silas, obeying orders 
with machine-like exactness and seeing that others 
obeyed them, too. Now he found himself falling 
more and more into the habit of relying on the quick 
mind of his subordinate for the smartness and in¬ 
itiative that he could not summon from his own slower 
and more cumbersome processes. He told himself 
that Sevens was given to experimentation and that 
this trait would be dangerous if allowed free rein, 
but that, subjected to his own sounder judgment, it 
became a convenience. The truth was that he had 
acquired the habit of the follower and could now 
display no quality of leadership save pompousness. 

Barbour remembered the morning soon after the 
funeral, when Shell had moved into the mahogany- 
panelled office that had been Beverly’s and had given 


45 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

him a desk in the adjoining room, that had been 
Shell’s own. They had talked that morning and out 
of the conversation, Sevens had brought a sense of 
bitter disillusionment. 

He could not now recall the exact words in which 
the older man had couched his opinions, but he could 
remember the chill that had settled about his own 
heart with the recognition of his chief’s self-seeking 
narrowness. It was obviously Tom Shell’s idea that 
history should repeat itself. As he had studied and 
emulated Silas Beverly so, he thought. Sevens should 
study and emulate him—though that was hardly 
candid. What he wanted from Sevens was not 
emulation but assistance of an importance beyond 
that expressed by his title or his pay. He believed 
that Sevens, in giving such service, should submerge 
his own personality and satisfy himself with looking 
toward the succession when his chief stepped aside 
in retirement. 

Shell overlooked—since its recognition might be 
mortifying—the fact that Sevens brought to his 
position assets of alertness and initiative which he 
himself had lacked, and that he preferred to climb 
by other means than the ladder of toadying. 

Since then the house of Beverly Brothers had 
grown. The soundness of its business policies re¬ 
mained unshaken and its verve showed an infusion 
of youth. The directors, who read this result in 
immutable figures, rendered tribute to Shell and 


46 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


knew nothing, or next to nothing, of the anonymous 
figure that stood behind Shell as the operator stands 
behind the curtain of the puppet-show. 

In theory such a situation need not be long en¬ 
dured by a man of ability and spirit. In fact it is 
often endured. 

“I might have pulled out long ago,” reflected 
Sevens now. “But the fact is I didn’t. I suppose 
other fur houses could have used me, but I’d have 
had to begin over from the bottom. Here the big 
chance seemed always just around the corner—and 
somehow the Beverly trade mark seemed like my 
own flag. I suppose I kidded myself into the idea 
that when I’d become just a shade more indispen¬ 
sable, I could write my own contract. ” 

In one respect Shell had been clever. He main¬ 
tained so well his front of lordly self-confidence that 
it was hard to carry to him the challenge of definite 
ultimatum. And in another way also Shell was 
clever. He managed always to intimate to the man 
himself a feeling of appreciation which he concealed 
from others, and always to be planning for a material 
recognition of that appreciation. 

“Now, for years,” Barbour told himself, “I’ve 
run that concern as actually as some petty kingdoms 
are run by their premiers—and yet I’ve never even 
been called an adviser. It’s always seemed an 
absolute monarchy with Tom Shell on the throne—the 
seemingly strong man. Nobody would believe me 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


47 


if I were to shout from the housetops that he’s just 
a gilded dummy. ” 

Then there was Hope! 

Without capital, a man could not venture to 
break away from an employment which, to every 
seeming, held high possibilities for the uncertainty 
of a gamble in the dark. Repeatedly Sevens had 
urged his claims and always, at the end, he had found 
himself cozened with expectancies and no richer— 
or little richer—in salary or admitted importance. 

The psychological truth was that Barbour Sevens 
was modest to a point of shyness. He, to whom the 
company owed an appreciable portion of its recent 
advancement, could not estimate himself as indis¬ 
pensable. He thought of the organization as a 
machine so soundly engineered that it could almost 
run itself on its initial impetus. He underestimated 
the esteem in which other houses held him and the 
readiness with which they would have welcomed him. 
He had been a poor boy to whom Tom Shell had 
vouchsafed a chance, and it was difficult to sweep 
aside his early gratitude and realize that he had grown 
to a larger stature and that Shell was seeking to 
wring him dry. In other points courageous, Bar¬ 
bour was in self-appraisal timid, and it was Tom Shell 
of the mediocre mind, who rightly gauged that situa¬ 
tion and used it to advantage. 


CHAPTER IV 


S HELL had held fixed opinions about a young 
business man “making a front.” He had 
persuaded Sevens, rather against his wishes 
and judgment, to join the club toward which he was 
walking now—walking with a grimly set face to re¬ 
sign from a membership that had profited him noth¬ 
ing. Tom Shell always lunched there, and Barbour 
could see him now, in his fancy, sitting self-com- 
placently back at his table smoking his fat, after¬ 
luncheon cigar, a figure of animal-like selfishness and 
egotism. Hope, mused the young man, had been 
bound to the cramping limitations of his own life, 
because they had both been cheated and underpaid. 
She still swore that he had given her the one thing 
that no one else could ever give, but in his heart Bar¬ 
bour Sevens wondered whether he hadn’t done for 
her what he had once done for Harvard: cheated her 
out of her chance of scoring in life. 

To-day he was resolved on doing two things: he 
meant to lop off the useless expense of that club 
membership and to talk so plainly with Tom Shell 
that no ambiguities could again stand between them. 
Heretofore he had encountered evasions. To-day 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


49 


he meant to batter them down—because to-day he 
was desperate. Perhaps, without realizing it, this 
was a time when his impatience would once again 
lead him into the impetuosity of being off-side in a 
decisive scrimmage. To-day he would no longer 
suffer himself to be put off. 

He turned off of Fifth Avenue into the side street 
upon which stood the entrance to the club and paused 
in a writing room to scribble a few formal words of 
resignation. After that he went to the dining room 
where he knew in advance at what table Tom Shell 
would be sitting. Shell moved in an orbit of fixed 
habit as binding and as straitened as that of a petty 
planet. He could be relied on to be occupying a 
given corner of the lunch room at a given hour, and 
to be lounging in a specified arm chair by a particular 
Fifth Avenue window a half hour later. 

Sevens saw him at a table with several others, as 
objectionably typical of successful business-men as 
himself. The party had reached their coffee and 
cigars, and the inevitable discussion, across crumpled 
napkins and filling ash trays, of the victory of the 
bootleggers over the Constitution. Barbour ordered 
a small coffee at an empty table near by and im¬ 
patiently waited for his opportunity—and while he 
waited his eyes dwelt resentfully on the group that 
delayed his reckoning. 

Shell had turned rat-gray, though he was hardly 
fifty. He had grown heavy and stolid. Selfishness 


oO 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


and conceit sat enthroned on his face, with a wooden 
self-complacency, while his talk bored his compan¬ 
ions, who endured it only because, like himself, they 
were creatures encased in strait-jackets of habit. 

At last the little clique reached their customary 
time of adjournment and, rising, pushed back their 
chairs. Then Sevens touched Shell on the arm. 

“I’d like to talk to you,” he said. 

“Can’t it wait till we get back to the office?” in¬ 
quired the older man without warmth. “I don’t 
like bringing business to the club. A gentleman’s 
club-” 

“This is personal—with me at least,” Sevens in¬ 
terrupted. “You put me into this club. To-day 
I’ve resigned from it. During the years you and I 
have both been members here, we haven’t often sat 
and chatted. Of course if you decline to do it 
now ” 

“Oh, no. I didn’t de-de-decline,” stuttered 
Shell. “Let’s go down to the lounging room. I 
always like to finish my cigar there by the window. ” 

When the chief had settled himself well back in 
overstaffed upholstery, and propped his feet on an 
overstaffed stool, a picture of creature comfort, he 
said bluntly: 

“I think it was a mistake for you—to resign. It 
doesn’t do a young business man any harm to be seen 
here. It’s good publicity. Makes a fellow ap¬ 
preciated. ” 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


51 


“Does it make you appreciate me?” The question 
was curt, and Shell meditatively removed his cigar 
from his lips to contemplate his companion in sur¬ 
prise. 

“I know you,” he said. “I d-d-don’t have to get 
my impressions of you here.” 

“I’d like to ask you a question or two.” Sevens 
was weighing his words and speaking carefully. 
“As a business man who has observed me, I’d like 
to have you tell me just what you know about 
me . Suppose you were jotting down a few 

lines for a card index of your force, their business 
assets and liabilities, I mean . . . what would 

you file on my card?” 

Shell turned his square blocked head and gazed 
out on the passing crowds along the slushy streets. 
The spectacle was less amusing than usual because 
so many umbrellas interfered with the outlook from 
the window. 

“I’d say that you were incorruptible, intelligent, 
and t-t-trust worthy, my boy,” announced the older 
man at length, with a magisterial pompousness. 
“I’d say that you were a g-good office man. ” 

“In other words, that I’m an adequate drudge 
Yet you took me up in the first place 
because you thought you saw in me a disposition to 
play the game hard and with keenness.” 

“I’d call you a hustler—p-perhaps a little lacking 

in conservatism.” 


52 ALIAS RED RYAN 

“Do you regard me as a prospect for advance¬ 
ment ?” 

Shell wrinkled his forehead. He at least was not 
lacking in conservatism and he had no wish to commit 
himself unduly. 

“As opportunity p-permits—un-d-d-doubtedly,” 
he acceded at length. “I served my seven years for 
Rachel as it were. You m-must be patient, too. ” 

The speaker seemed to swell a little with pardon¬ 
able pride as he mentally reviewed his own success, 
then he fell again into quotation. He liked to lard 
his talk bombastically with trite and memorized 
things. “You know, my boy, ‘He also serves who 
only stands and waits.’ 

Sevens laughed shortly. “Serves whom?” he 
demanded; then, without pausing for an answer he 
went on: 

“You like quotations, Mr. Shell. Did you ever 
read Alfred Noyes?” 

“Yes,” the square-headed gentleman nodded, then 
with a sweep of his hand began: 

“ ‘There’s a barrel organ carolling across the golden 
street-* ” 

“That’s not the one I mean,” his junior cut him 
short. “It’s this: 

“ ‘A great while ago there was a school boy. 

He lived in a cottage by the sea, 

And the very first thing he could remember 

Was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.’ ” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


53 


Sevens did not declaim his verse unctuously as Shell 
would have done. Unconsciously he leaned for¬ 
ward and spoke with a simple, almost passionate in¬ 
tensity : 

‘‘‘He could watch them, when he woke, from his window. 
With the tall cranes hoisting out the freight. 

And he used to think of shipping as a sea-cook. 

And sailing to the Golden Gate.’ ” 

“It has a nice swing,” said Shell censoriously. 
“But how does it apply?” 

“That’s me,” declared Sevens, with a bleak and 
bitter emphasis. “Now for the actuality: 

“ ‘He is perched on a high stool in London, 

The Golden Gate is very far away. 

They caught him and they caged him like a squirrel, 

He is totting up accounts and growing gray.’ 

“What I want to know,” he demanded with a 
quick intake of breath, “is whether this last stanza is 
going to apply to me, too: 

“‘He will never, never, never sail to Frisco, 

But the very last thing that he will see 
Will be the sailor-men a-dancing in the sunrise 
By the capstan that stands upon the quay/ . . 

“I want to know whether that’s all I’ve got to 
look ahead to, Mr. Shell?” 

“If you mean you want to know whether B-B- 
Beverly B-Brothers will ever send you sailing to the 


54 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


G-G-Golden Gate,” responded the chief with heavy 
humour, “I c-c-c-can only say, I’m afraid not.” 

“I’m notasking favours for myself,” went onSevens 
steadily. “And if I weren’t there with the goods of 
course I couldn’t get on. But I know I am and you 
know I am—and I’m not willing to have Hope 
eternally bound to this treadmill of poverty with 
me while others go ahead.” 

“When a young man marries so young as you 
did,” observed Shell drily, “he gives hostages to 
fortune. I think it was Bacon who said that.” 

“Has my being married affected my value to 
Beverly Brothers?” 

“No, I didn’t mean that, exactly. It fetters a 
man’s independence, though.” 

“Then you must mean, Mr. Shell, that because 
you know I’ve given hostages to fortune, you’re 
exploiting me by the strangle hold of my necessity. 
You must mean that you think I don’t dare rebel.” 

For an instant the heavy face grew dark under a 
scowl-cloud and the first words of wrath lost them¬ 
selves in excited stuttering. It was a paroxysm 
that passed and Shell, who had half straightened in 
affront, sank back again to wave his cigar in a 
decisive gesture. In his tone was the stubborn 
finality of a solid mind. 

“You c-can rebel—if you like.” 

For just a moment Barbour Sevens was silent. 
His face had paled a little. He realized that he had 


55 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

committed the unforgivable sin of wounding this 
man’s smug sense of virtue, and he could guess the 
penalty. Perhaps the tableau or the quality of the 
voices was arresting, for behind his paper, in a near¬ 
by chair, an elderly member found himself distracted 
into listening. 

“Hope has had bronchitis,” declared Sevens ir¬ 
relevantly, “and it’s hung on stubbornly. To-day 
she’s seeing a lung specialist—and I’m afraid to go 
home to-night. I’m afraid of what the report will 
be . She’s got to go somewhere ... to 

get out of this damned slush and chill. That takes 
money. ” 

“If your wife is ill,”responded Shell in a hard voice, 
“it would seem an injudicious time to face unemploy¬ 
ment. ” 

“To a friendly superior—if an employee deserved 
it—it ought to seem a proper time for long delayed 
recognition. ” 

“That,” commented the chief, “is not the way 
Beverly Brothers does business.” Shell looked at 
his watch. “It’s time for us both to be getting 
back to the office,” he said. 

Sevens rose too, but his eyes suddenly blazed, 
and he laid a detaining hand on the other’s arm. 

“I suppose I’ve cooked my goose,” he declared 
with that strain which passion brings to a low-pitched 
voice. “I’ve got the name and I might as well have 
the game. You can give me what’s coming to me— 


56 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


a material promotion, or you can let me go. I know 
that when you do that you’ll bawl me out and I mean 
to beat you to it . . . I thought you were my 

benefactor when you offered friendly advances there 
at Cambridge ... I thought you were opening 
up the future to me . . but you were only 

caging me, like the squirrel in those verses—caging 
me in an ante-chamber where you could keep me and 
use me . . . You’d submitted to slavery all 

your life . . . you’d suffered yourself to be 

hectored and brow-beaten till at last you got your 
chance to turn from slave to slave driver . 
and you went to it . . . ” 

He paused while the other stuttered ineffectually 
in the face of such appalling insolence, but before 
Shell recovered his command of crushing words 
Sevens had swept into a fresh torrent of rebellion. 

“ My work has been faithful and responsible . . . 
I’ve saved you many times what my increased 
salary would be and I’ve handled matters of prime 
importance . . . I’ve done everything but boot- 

lick ... as you did when you served for 
Rachel as you call it. That I won’t do . . .You 

advise against marriage because marriage cramps 
pig-headed selfishness . . . and as you sit there, 

you’re a figurehead of pig-headed selfishness, with no 
resources outside your swinish little routine of crea¬ 
ture comfort and self praise . . . Now I’m 

through! Am I promoted—or fired?” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


57 


For an instant Shell said nothing, but the near-by 
gentleman noted his apoplectic face, and though he 
pretended not to have heard what he had heard, he 
grinned blissfully behind his paper. “The old bore 
got what was coming to him,” he mused. “I hope 
it was worth what it’ll cost that young fool who 
lashed out.” 

Then Shell spoke, and he spoke with a surprising 
quiet. 

“You’re neither p-promoted nor fired—just yet,” 
he said in a hard evenness. “But we are both late 
getting back. I’ll give you a chance to cool out 
under the collar, and to apologize later.” 

Sevens laughed bitterly. “You need me even 
more than I supposed,” he said with dry defiance. 


CHAPTER V 


HAT afternoon passed, in some unaccount¬ 



able fashion. The impulse of habit was 


carrying Barbour Sevens through its routine 
like an automaton previously wound up; through 
dictation, conference, and even the exercise of a nice 
business judgment, yet he seemed only semi-con¬ 
scious of the processes. 

The office knew by some sixth sense of intuition, 
rather than by any overt manifestation, that a 
breach had opened between the chief and this 
important lieutenant, and the office fell tacitly into 
the taking of sides. A popularity vote that after¬ 
noon would have gone hard with Shell. 

Once Sevens paused during dictation and looked 
at the watch that lay before him on his desk. It 
was four o’clock now . . . That was the hour 

fixed for Hope to present herself before the diag¬ 
nostician, whose word was so nearly final in his own 


field. 


He pretended to be concentrating on the letter 
under construction but as he turned away his face 
his lips twitched at their corners, and about his eyes 
the muscles constricted to tightness. 


58 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


59 


“She’s hearing the verdict now,” he reflected. 
“Good God!” 

The stenographer looked up. “Period?” she in¬ 
quired promptingly. “Does that end the sentence?” 

“Period—Paragraph,” dictated the man in his 
usual voice. “‘The present conditions in the fur 

market make it necessary-’ ” and he listened to the 

sound of his own voice as if it were droning upward 
from some remote, subterranean source. 

He left the elevated train at his station and turned 
into his own street that evening, as into a familiar 
place made unfamiliar by the stroke of some disas¬ 
trous blight. He must get to Hope and have the 
suspense relieved by knowledge—and yet knowledge 
was more likely to confirm than dissipate his dread. 
At the door of his own apartment house he halted, 
obsessed by a sudden, intolerable paroxysm of fear. 
All verdicts are not brought out of jury rooms nor 
are all like sentences for prison terms. 

After that trembling moment he lunged through 
the street door much as he might have plunged 
through a curtain of flame, had the building been 
burning with actual instead of fright-kindled fires. 

But with his key in the door of his apartment he 
braced himself, forcing a smile of mock confidence, 
and slipped quietly into the narrow entryway from 
which he could see unobstructedly into the small 
living room. 

Hope sat there and she had not yet heard him. Her 




60 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


hands were lying in her lap with a wax-like stillness 
and her face was unstirring of feature; stamped with 
something like bleak resignation, which was the 
nearest her intrepid courage would come to the 
admission of despair. Her profile was no less lovely, 
he thought, than it had been, when her eyes had 
first widened into confessed love, but now it was 
paler and less graciously rounded to its curves. 

Sevens sprang forward and his carefully rehearsed 
words of cheery greeting refused to say themselves. 

Hope rose suddenly and the smile, upon which she 
had also resolved, came so artfully to her lips that its 
counterfeiting was almost a success. 

“What did he say?” demanded her husband, with 
the unrelieved bluntness of terror. 

He had her in his arms holding her hungrily, 
defiantly, and her answer came softly, close to his ear. 

“It isn’t like it used to be, dear,” she declared. 
“Nowadays, if we take a thing like that in time, we 
can beat it.” 

“A thing like that,” he echoed wretchedly. 
“Then-” 

“He’s not ready to speak with absolute certainty 
yet,” she answered. “Some of the tests aren’t 
finished. He calls it a strong tendency—perhaps an 
incipient stage—and only in one lung. He says that 
with rest and nourishment, I ought to beat it.” 

“Rest and nourishment!” A hint of hope had 
stolen into the man’s voice, but at once it faded out. 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


61 


“You’re not telling me all of it,” he accused. “ Was 
rest and nourishment all he said?” 

She drew away and looked into his face. She was 
even able to flash a wan little sparkle of amusement 
from her vivid eyes, because she was strong with the 
courage of laughter. 

“That’s all—so far as we can carry out the orders,” 
she answered. "Of course, like all doctors, he 
recommended a change of climate—the mid South 
or Lake Placid.” 

“Did he recommend or command?” The question 
came with a categoric insistence, and Hope laughed. 

“What difference does the word make, dear?” 
she said, smiling. “How could we obey, if it was a 
command?” 

The man’s face was stonily set. 

“I don’t know—how,” he said slowly. “But 
I do know that it shall be done—if I have to break 
into the sub-treasury single-handed. I know that 
much. ” 

“Don’t be silly,” she commanded. “We’ll win 
out. We must just avoid getting panicky. ” 

“I wonder whether you know what you mean to 
me, Hope,” he demanded in a stifled voice. “I 
wonder if you know how little anything else, and 
everything else, counts with me. To me the world 
began when we stood in those pine woods on Cape 
Cod—and the gulls were screaming as they drifted 
over. To me the world would end if-” 






62 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


He broke off and she answered a shade huskily: 
“Perhaps I do know. You haven’t only said it. 
You’ve lived it. We won’t admit any ‘ifs’ yet.” 

He sat long after Hope had gone to bed that night, 
staring ahead, and it is doubtful if the brick and 
plaster of the walls were obstructing the things he 
saw. He wondered whether she was really asleep 
or only pretending to be, so that her seeming calm¬ 
ness might still the febrile excitement in his own 
heart. He wanted to pace the room, but in so small 
an apartment there was no latitude for pacing so he 
sat stiffly facing the haunting, shapeless assailants 
of his dread. Through that confusion, in which 
sanity grew unstable, the figure of Tom Shell passed 
and repassed, converted by his mood into a specter 
[of persecution. It was almost as if the words of the 
[physician had been dictated by Tom Shell, as if of 
intent his employer had blockaded their life and 
deprived them of those simple requirements which 
would have been artillery for the meeting of this 
impalpable enemy. 

The telephone jangled stridently in the confined 
space, and with a smothered oath Sevens jumped for 
it and caught the receiver down, muffling the bell 
with his open palm. He wondered whether it had 
wakened Hope perhaps from some quiet dream 
of green and blue serenities and of an undisturbed 
childhood by the sea. 

“ Who is it? ” he demanded in low-toned fury and a 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


63 


jaunty voice came back, “Hello, Sevens. This is 
Joe Mandelle. I’m clown at the door, seeking 
admittance.’ ’ 

“Sorry,” Barbour’s response was inhospitably 
curt. “I can’t ask you up. My wife isn’t very well 
and-” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the voice was incorrigibly brisk 
and cheerful. Also it was insistent. “Just run 
down here for a few minutes, then, will you? I 
won’t keep you long.” 

Sevens turned his head and peered into the dark¬ 
ness beyond the living-room door. It was quiet 
there and seemingly undisturbed. 

“I’ll be down,” he acceded grudgingly. 

What could Mandelle want of him? Mandelle 
and he had known each other during the first year at 
Harvard but they had never been intimates and they 
had not met since those college times. Sevens re¬ 
membered him as a slender, academic chap with a 
shrewd wit, who, he had heard vaguely, was practis¬ 
ing law nowadays. 

“Cheero, old son,” greeted the visitor when Bar¬ 
bour stepped out of the dingy elevator cage. “I 
haven’t seen you since long before the Germans be¬ 
came Huns. ” There he broke off and added soberly, 
“What’s up? You look as if you’d been seeing 
ghosts. ” 

“Ihave,” came the flat-toned reply. “I’m see¬ 
ing them still.” 



64 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


As Barbour met his visitor’s inquiring glance, he 
gathered a first, swift impression of enviable prosper¬ 
ity, and the self-assurance born of success. 

Barbour Sevens was not given to the spouting of 
confidences and this man, whom he had not seen in 
years, had never been close to his affections. The 
inhibition of almost exaggerated reserve would usual¬ 
ly have locked his tongue, but to-night his soul was 
like an overstressed boiler which must ease its 
pressure or burst, and the visitor’s sympathy, 
declaring itself without obtrusiveness, offered a 
safety valve. Contrary to everything that was 
customary in his habit of life, Barbour Sevens found 
himself talking rapidly, torrentially. He was hardly 
conscious of his own flow or direction of words until 
he came up short with the realization that he had 
just reached a sort of peroration with a vehement 
denunciation of Tom Shell. He had done that 
unaccustomed thing to a man who was almost a 
stranger. 

“I oughtn’t to have said that, Mandelle,” he 
hastily qualified in a shamefaced fashion. “I’ve 
been making a fool of myself. I’m not quite 
myself to-night. I’m in a sort of frenzy.” 

“It’s all right,” Mandelle reassured him quietly. 
“You may unburden yourself to me and be sure that 
it will be held in absolutely Masonic confidence. 
I know how you feel, and it’s not unreasonable. 
Aside from stress of feeling, you have a grievance. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


65 


The fur trade recognizes that you’re the brains of 
that outfit, and that Shell is jealous of your ability. 
It’s an open secret among your business associates.” 

Sevens passed his hand across his forehead and 
found it dank with nervous sweat. 

“But you’re a lawyer,” he demurred in some be¬ 
wilderment. “You aren’t a fur man. How do you 
know about Shell—or me?” 

The visitor smiled. “They say that lawyers and 
reporters have to know something about every¬ 
thing—and then to forget it,” he observed. “It 
was about the fur business that I came to see you 
to-night. I want to learn more than I know and I 
want you to have lunch with me to-morrow and give 
me some pointers.” 

“Pointers?” Barbour was still uncertainly groping 
toward self-collection. 

“You see,” went on Mandelle in explanation, 
“the fur trade is frightened. The present epidemic 
of warehouse robberies seems to have gotten entirely 
out of the hands of the police. Every night brings 
a fresh outrage, boldly conceived, and successfully 
carried out. The smaller dealers feel that they must 
mobilize in some fashion to resist burglary . 
and that’s where I come in.” 

“As a prosecutor?” inquired Sevens. 

His visitor shook his head. There s no one 
caught to prosecute yet, he offered reminder. It s 
rather along lines of prevention, but if you’ll lunch 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


66 

with me to-morrow we can take that up. I won’t 
keep you now.” 

“Why, yes,” assented Barbour with a dull realiza¬ 
tion that, after all, there would be a to-morrow with 
its requirements of routine. “Yes, I can do that.” 

“And meanwhile, old man”—the attorney flushed 
as though embarrassed at his own suggestion— 
“would a small loan help you out?” 

Sevens flushed, too, and raised a hand in a gesture of 
refusal. 

“ No, no. Thank you just the same,” he protested. 
“It’s a thing that goes deeper than that need—and 
I’ve got to work it out myself.” 

“Until to-morrow, then, at noon—and to hell with 
Shell.” 

As he entered the elevator cage again, somehow 
Sevens felt as if he had opened a pressure vent and 
loosened the bursting tautness of his soul. 

Mandelle walked away and turned the corner with 
an air of meditative engrossment. Before his steps 
had carried him far, he went into a cigar store and 
closed himself into a public telephone booth from 
which he called a number and announced to some¬ 
one with crisp satisfaction, “I’ve seen our man and 
I’m to lunch with him to-morrow. ” 

Listening to the other voice, he made a note or two, 
and when he had hung up, consulted his watch and 
hurried out as though his night’s business was not 
yet finished. For some distance his course held to 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


67 


Sixth Avenue, then it turned into a cross-street of the 
upper twenties between the elevated tracks and 
Broadway. 

It was about ten o’clock and that cross artery, 
which at the noon hour was almost impassably con¬ 
gested with heavy-browed workmen of Slavic and 
Semitic features, was now sounding and empty. 
Russian and Polish names showed out from the 
street signs, and most of them proclaimed furriers of 
the smaller wholesale guild. 

Mandelle looked up and down the almost deserted 
block, and altered his gait to stroll slowly along its 
darkly walled ways as if bent on reconnoitring a 
district where robbery had been prevalent. He even 
paused and lingered in a doorway for a little, though 
he smoked his cigar in the darkness, as a man would 
not have done upon whom rested any wish for con¬ 
cealment. 

While he still stood in that fashion, a large motor 
car came westward from Fifth Avenue and about 
midway in the block it slowed down. Mandelle 
stepped out of his entrance alcove, and as he did so 
the light of a street lamp fell direct upon him, and 
made him clearly visible. The machine which was 
just now passing him rolled on at an even speed and 
then halted across the way, two thirds of the distance 
between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. 

Out of it four men came hurriedly, one walking a 
few steps west, one an equal distance east, while 


68 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


two others went, with unhesitant precision, to the 
doorway of a building whose windows were piled 
with pelts and skins, and fell expeditiously to work 
upon its lock with a jimmy. 

Mandelle could see that the two sentinel figures 
were peering vigilantly up and down the street and 
that at the side of each, where a right hand swung 
easily at arm’s length, there was the dull glint of light 
on blued metal. 

From the doorway came the sound of violent 
assault, then, following tumultuously on the recent 
stillness of the street, the brazen clangour of a dis¬ 
turbed burglar alarm. It was as if the thieves be¬ 
longed to some boisterous burlesque instead of to a 
profession of stealth and furtiveness, and as if they 
had started out warehouse-breaking attended by a 
particularly unmusical brass band. 

The car at the curb, with its engine purring to a 
muffled throb, stood waiting, and the two sentinels 
remained as calm to outward seeming as though they 
were lawful peace-guardians on peg-post duty. 

Mandelle, or any one else who had been reading 
the papers of late, would have recognized these 
manifestations as pertaining to an evilly dramatic 
enterprise which had recently been much exploited 
in news-print. 

The method was one which had so far been re¬ 
peatedly successful, and it looked as though it were 
proving successful once again. The attorney who 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


09 


had been in quest of academic information for his 
professional work seemed to have stumbled, by for¬ 
tuitous circumstance, upon a highly practical object 
lesson. He might have known the procedure from 
his daily reading and have seen it here exemplified in 
fact. The burglar alarm would bring the police hot¬ 
footing to the spot in four or five minutes ... In 
that time the door would have given, the pelts, pre¬ 
viously reconnoitred by innocent-seeming scouts in 
the guise of customers, would have been gathered up 
and pitched into the waiting car. 

The assaulting squad would have swung aboard 
and the getaway would have been accomplished. In¬ 
cidentally, history showed that any meddling passerby 
would have been shot. 

In that last detail perhaps lay a moral on non¬ 
interference for Mr. Mandelle. Certainly the sight of 
him standing under the arclight had in no way caused 
the occupants of the raiding car to halt or retard 
their undertaking. Now he felt as if he were timing 
a race of which he knew the terms and conditions. 

Mandelle stepped back into his doorway, this time 
cupping his palm about the lighted end of his cigar, 
and watched unobtrusively, as one who avails him¬ 
self of an unexpected illustration. His eye took in 
the pertinent fact that the license number on the car 
was obscured, as though it had been recently greased 
and driven over dusty roads. 

Out of the breached door staggered one man 


70 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


heavily laden with a shapeless burden of plunder. At 
each end of the block, echoing blatantly to the jangle 
of the excited bell, appeared inquisitive figures first 
drifting timidly, then running with emboldened speed 
toward the focus of excitement. The lookouts 
turned, each his appointed way, and each warningly 
brought up the hand that gripped its automatic 
pistol. 

The vanguard of scurrying investigators caught 
the metallic gleam and prudently slowed down. 
From the car came a profane objurgation to some¬ 
one to hurry. The operation depended upon its 
completion in a given, and narrow, margin of time. 
One of the two men who had hurried in through the 
jimmied door had not yet emerged, and his tardiness 
held the threatening seed of disaster. 

Joe Mandelle had slipped unobtrusively out of his 
shelter and moved a short distance away. Now as 
the first of the hurrying casuals, urged on by his re¬ 
sponsibility of citizenship, yet held back, too, by the 
monitory gleam of the pistol, came alongside, the 
lawyer passed him, crossing the street at a run, 
and calling out, “Thieves! Catch ’em, men! Stop 
’em!” 

As though his ardour were carrying him headlong 
beyond the zone of caution, Mandelle found himself 
suddenly the only man who had come close to the 
flanking outpost. As he arrived ten feet away, he 
saw the belated burden-bearer rush out and hurl his 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


71 


loot into the car. This last to emerge had lost his 
cap and above his bundle of furs showed a mop of red 
hair. At the same instant Mandelle became conscious 
of a pistol muzzle directed at his breast, as the wielder 
of the weapon, his need of tarrying brought to an end, 
began backing toward the machine. 

Mandelle sought to stop, but his running feet 
carried him a stride or two closer, and then the muzzle 
was almost against him. As if he had been a billiard 
ball striking a side cushion he caromed back, osten¬ 
tatiously lifting both hands above his head, and 
backing off almost as rapidly as he had been trotting 
forward. 

But in the interval, under the incandescent light, 
the lawyer had deliberately closed and opened one 
eye, as if in an elaborate wink, and under his voice 
had said, “Michell’s—in an hour.” 

The sentry made a dash for the car and caught 
step on its running board as it lurched forward. 
The outpost beyond jumped for it as it passed him 
and was hauled expeditiously aboard. As the 
machine darted for Sixth Avenue, pistol shots sound¬ 
ed from behind Mandelle, and a light fusillade 
answered truculently from the fleeing car. The 
attorney flattened himself against the wall, and a 
moment later was telling the patrolman all he knew, 
except that he deleted from his narrative any mention 
of the wink and the whispered word. 

In substantiation of his own reputable status, he 


72 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

handed the officer his card upon which was engrossed 
the legend “Attorney at Law” and the address of 
his office. 

“I’ll tell the world you’re a nervy guy, running 
right in on them guns,” observed the policeman 
admiringly, and the lawyer shook his head in depre¬ 
cation of the compliment. 

“If I’d had a gun myself,” he began, and the 
officer laughed. 

“If you’d had a gun, buddy,” he announced 
vigorously, “they’d be motoring you to a cooling 
board at the present time. I’ll say they would.” 


CHAPTER VI 


A S ALREADY recorded, Mr. Mandelle had whis- 
£-\ pered across the muzzle of the gunman’s 
automatic, “Michell’s—in an hour,” and 
when the theatre crowds were spilling out into Broad¬ 
way, he turned into the designated establishment and 
took his seat at a table as distant as possible from the 
dancing floor and the orchestra—though as yet he was 
alone. There within ten minutes he was joined by a 
companion of personable appearance and creditably 
inconspicuous dress. This newcomer who dropped 
into a chair across the table was not the same who 
had confronted the lawyer with a pistol between them 
an hour earlier—yet his first words indicated that he 
had arrived in response to the whispered summons 
relayed from that time and place. “I got your mes¬ 
sage, ” were the exact words,“ and I’m here, though 
it’s been a busy evening and I hoped to get home 
early.” 

Mandelle nodded. The long room of Michell’s 
second floor was filling now and the orchestra was 
swinging into action. 

“What did the job amount to?” demanded the 

lawyer, and the other shrugged. 

73 


74 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“Paid fairly well/’ he said. “It ought to run to 
seven or eight thousand, I should say—but the same 
effort might have netted double.” 

“Nobody got winged, did they? The police were 
laying down a pretty heavy barrage on them as they 
made the getaway . . . Red was slow on his exit 

cue. It was like a stage-wait in a melodrama.” 

The gentleman across the table shrugged again. 

“That last load tha^ Red brought out was the 
prize package,” he enlightened. “It had been 
moved to another shelf since our scout made his size- 
up of the shop . . . Red had to hunt for it . . . 

and he wasn’t the lad to pass it up. Red’s thorough¬ 
going. ” 

There was a pause. Then the lawyer’s companion 
questioned abruptly and almost with asperity: “ Why 
did you send for me? I wanted to get a night’s 
rest.” 

“So did I,” responded Mr. Mandelle quietly, “but 
I wanted to talk to you more about new business— 
that may need your attention. ” 

“Shoot, then,” instructed the other crisply. 
“What’s on your mind that couldn’t wait?” 

“Who is the Tiffany of the fur business in New 
York?” demanded Mandelle in a manner of abrupt 
challenge, and the other man let his irritability de¬ 
clare itself in his answering voice. 

“What’s the big idea of the catechism? How¬ 
ever, I’ll bite, Mr. Interlocutor. Who is the Tiffany 


ALIAS RED RYAN 75 

( 

of the fur trade? . . . Why, Beverly Brothers, 

who else?” 

Mandelle nodded. “Correct, Mr. Bones,” he 
responded lightly. “And is the best too good for 
you? Why shouldn’t you do a little business with 
Beverly Brothers?” 

The gentleman facetiously addressed as Mr. Bones 
favoured his questioner with a pitying glance of a 
moment’s duration, then he shook his head corn- 
miser atingly. 

“Now listen, Mandelle,” he suggested softly. 
“You’re a good snappy thinker but, after all, a lawyer 
is only half a crook. Breaking into Tiffany’s and 
breaking into somebody else’s boiled egg are all the 
same to you—because you’re an onlooker.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question.” 

“All right. I’ll answer it. We haven’t stripped the 
Beverly warehouses for exactly the same reason that 
Tiffany’s isn’t looted every night.” 

“Which is?” 

“Which is because it’s Tiffany’s. Did you ever 
notice the steel window curtains they draw down 
there at eventide? Did you ever observe sundry 
other precautions that they uncharitably take against 
such laudable ambitions? Have you ever passed the 
place after dark?” 

“Beverly Brothers have no steel curtains on their 
warehouses in Twenty-seventh Street and Thirtieth 
Street—nor yet in the Bronx.” 


76 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“Righto. But Beverly Brothers have an invest¬ 
ment worth safe-guarding—and I fancy they do it. ” 
An avid light flashed in the speaker’s eyes. “Why, 
man, they have silver foxes in there! ” 

“They are dead foxes,” Mr. Mandelle offered 
casual reminder. “They can’t bite you.” 

“Sheep don’t bite you either—but sheep dogs 
do.” 

Mandelle leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. 

“Suppose you had inside help,” he suggested. 

His companion looked across the table with a face 
first amazed, then derisive, and after that his voice 
came up from unplumbed depths of scorn. 

“Is Tom Shell going to help me?” he demanded, 
then he shook his head decisively. “No, even if Tom 
Shell decided to rob himself I wouldn’t work with 
him. He’s too dense.” 

“Can the comedy relief, Joe,” ordered Mandelle 
with abrupt crispness. “Sometimes what I have 
to say may be worth listening to. It’s not Shell I’m 
talking about.” 

He paused impressively and his face was neither 
more nor less conspicuously arresting of expression 
than that of the other diners about him, as he re¬ 
sumed : 

“I mean Barbour Sevens.” 

“Sevens! Listen, Mandelle, why don’t you suggest 
getting the Bishop of New York to help us loot St. 
Patrick’s?” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


77 


“Barbour Sevens,” went on Mandelle in unper¬ 
turbed evenness, “is sore.” 

“He’d have to be not only as sore as a crab but as 
crooked as a dog’s hind leg, for that to help us. ” 

“I went to college with him,” proceeded the lawyer. 
“He’s honest enough, but right now he’s unbalanced. 
He’s nursing the kind of grudge that’s looking for 
revenge—though he doesn’t realize it himself yet. 
He needs money to send a sick wife south. The 
man’s half crazed.” 

“But you say yourself he’s straight.” 

Mandell laughed shortly. “Wrangling over psy¬ 
chology won’t get us anywhere. My idea is that 
any boiler will burst if you give it enough pressure. 
This man is ripe for bursting. He’s been gypped 
and he’s ready to hit back—only he’s got to be made 
to see it and that’s where you come in. ” 

Across the table his companion was drumming 
thoughtfully on the cloth with his fingers—and that 
trick was, with him, a confession of challenged 
interest. 

“This business is sittin’ right pretty just now,” 
he reflected. “But I’m not saying it couldn’t be 
improved. Elaborate your idea. I’m listening, 
only remember you can’t always trust a straight 
guy to play on the level with crooks. ” 

“Possibly,” commented Mandelle drily. “You 
are unduly harsh of judgment. All I suggest is that 
you give this man a careful once-over. He’s going 



78 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


to lunch with me to-morrow at Piggott’s. You know 
the place. If he looks like a prospect to you—we 
can talk again. If not, there’s nothing lost but a 
half hour of daylight.” 

More detail of discussion ensued while the orches¬ 
tra blared the length of the room away and finally 
Mandelle admitted a misgiving of his own. 

“I’m bound to admit I don’t see just how you’ll 
go about entering into negotiation with him—if 
he strikes you as a ripe possibility. That looks 
ticklish.” 

The other laughed, or perhaps it would be better 
to say snorted, scornfully. 

“Leave that to me, ” he directed. “You amateurs 
always fall hard for a proposition that’s next to 
impossible and then you always flounder around 
and get excited about the easy angles. Leave that to 
me. If this lad’s ripe, I’ll gather him in. If he isn’t, 
I won’t even shake the tree.” 

When Hope Sevens awoke later than usual the 
next morning she found Barbour draped in one of her 
own kitchen aprons and busy over the gas-range. 

While they breakfasted, as if by some tacit agree¬ 
ment, they smiled across the little table and said 
nothing of the news that yesterday had brought 
with the crushing impact of disaster. But Barbour’s 
toast and eggs came near choking him as he thought 
how even this small apartment would be as widely 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


79 


empty to him as the wastes about the Pole—if he 
should find himself alone between its walls. He had 
not told Hope of his quarrel with Shell and this 
morning he saw, in that lashing out of yesterday, 
the unforgivable folly of a man who, because he has 
been denied a full feast, has cast away his half 
loaf. He held her tightly close as he kissed her 
good-bye, and his cheerfully chosen words fell into a 
dismal bleakness which she pretended not to rec¬ 
ognize. 

When he entered the office of Beverly Brothers, the 
glass door to Shell’s own cubicle of authority stood 
ajar and at the mahogany desk sat Shell himself with 
a morning paper spread before him and a threatening 
scowl on his face. He looked up as Sevens entered 
and nodded curtly but, in the quick glance that he 
cast upon his subordinate, he recognized that Sevens 
was haggard and pallid of seeming, and that under 
his eyes were puffs and smudges that reflected a sleep¬ 
less night. Yesterday, the chief reflected, that same 
face with its square-blocked jaw had been a fighting 
face of revolt. To-day its features were stamped and 
haunted by worry. Its spirit seemed tamed, even 
cowed. Perhaps Sevens would come forward sub¬ 
missively now with his apology. 

But Sevens proffered no apology. He went in 
taciturn fashion to his own desk and it was only 
when the chief called to him that he rose and entered 
the other room. 



80 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“ Have you read the morning paper, Sevens? ” came 
the first inquiry and the younger man shook his head 
in moody negation. 

“Well, cast your eye over that.” Shell was sput¬ 
tering with wrath. “Read about that fur robbery 
1-1-last night. That place isn’t two b-b-blocks from 
one of our own warehouses . . . ten thousand 

worth of pelts according to this report taken out and 
loaded into a car . . . while the burglar alarm 

rang . . . and the d-d-damned police took their 

ease in their station-house!” 

Sevens glanced down the column of the proffered 
sheet and his only comment was, “Cool work.” 

“Cool work! D-d-damn it, man, that’s the 
seventh such crime in two weeks, and the police have 
d-done n-n-nothing. Nothing at all!” 

“No.” The monosyllable was dully unexcited. 

“I’ve already had some telephone talk about it 
with the trade. ” Shell gathered up some memoranda 
from his desk. “ They all feel that the time’s come to 
take some action—some d-definite action. W-what 
do you suggest?” 

“Nothing, ” answered the younger man bleakly. 

“Nothing? H-h-haven’t you any ideas?” 

To Shell’s fresh astonishment Sevens laughed iron¬ 
ically. In Sevens, who had come ready to eat 
humble pie, because the need was imperative, a sud¬ 
den and gusty anger leaped anew. An uncon¬ 
trollable impulse of rage swept him impetuously, and 


ALIAS RED RYAN SI 

once more he realized that in the moment of scrim¬ 
mage he was playing offside. 

“Why should I make suggestions?” he inquired in 
an edged voice. “I’m only a damned hired man— 
an office drudge.” 

The chief’s face reddened hotly. He spun round 
in his swivel chair and gazed at his subordinate, then 
stammeringly he broke out. 

“If you’re going t-t-to t-talk like that, p-perhaps 
you’ll be good enough to c-c-close the door.” 

But Barbour, standing in his place, made no move 
to obey and slowly Tom Shell rose himself and 
slammed the glass-topped barrier of his sanctum. 
Then he went back to his desk. 

“Sevens,” he began, with a slow utterance meant to 
be sternly forceful and also impressively temperate, 
“after yesterday and t-this m-morning, it’s hard to 
see any spirit in you except a d-determination to 
antagonize me b-b-beyond re-c-conciliation. In my 
place most men would—1-1-let you go. No man is 
indespensable to any b-b-business. ” 

Barbour made no response. There seemed none 
to make. He realized that in spite of all common 
sense he had asked for the decapitating blow which 
was about to fall and it was too late to retract. What 
he did not realize was that, for all his insubordination, 
Shell could not do without him. 

But the man sitting at his desk did realize it even 
while he sought to disguise the recognition under the 


82 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


spirit of one wounded by ingratitude. He could not 
bring himself either to dropping the young pilot 
or to giving him the full credit of his title, and so he 
sat wagging his heavy-jawed head in injured per¬ 
plexity. 

“I t-taught you all you know, Sevens,” he added 
somewhat aggrievedly. “Have you other employ¬ 
ment in view?” 

The last question came in a surprisingly quiet cone, 
and suddenly the subordinate felt himself placed on 
the defensive, his frothy bubble of bravado pricked 
into nothingness. 

He had moved a step forward and his face, which 
with its clean-cut jaw had been, for an instant, the 
fighting face again, went abruptly pale. With 
sudden giddiness he groped for a chair and dropped 
into it, covering his eyes with his hands. 

The cumulative stresses and alarms of the past 
twenty-four hours, the sleeplessness and exhaustion 
of spent passion, had all at once struck him weak. 

“No,” he said dully, “I have nothing else in view.” 

Shell’s jaw had dropped a bit at the unaccustomed 
sight of such agitation in this ordered place of business 
routine. It left him in a situation which called for 
something like subtlety, and subtlety was an at¬ 
tribute which he could not command. Then he 
rose and took a step forward. 

“You’re under a n-nervous strain, Sevens,” he 
magnanimously asserted. “Your anxiety about 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


83 


your w-wife has upset you. For the present we’d 
both better agree to overlook h-hastiness of speech. 
We’re under fire right now—we’re declaring war 
on these crooks, and you can’t quit us on the eve of 
battle. When the fight with outsiders is over, we 
can take up things nearer home.” 

Sevens nodded and Shell, relieved at having held 
his man in line, told himself that he had behaved 
with a handsome generosity. To himself he mused, 
“Sevens is a hard child to nurse—but valuable. 
Most men would have broken with him, but I handled 
it more delicately. I gave him his head and now he’ll 
come round all right.” 

Into Piggott’s place at twelve-thirty Sevens turned 
with Joe Mandelle, and the two found themselves 
seated at a table which commanded an outlook 
through a street window. As they had paused to 
check their coats in the entrance a gentleman, who 
had already done so, stood waiting there as if by 
appointment with some one who was taxing his 
patience by tardiness. Before their order had been 
given this gentleman took his place, still alone, at a 
table next to theirs which, until his coming, had been 
labelled, “Reserved.” 

Once more, responsive to the seductive invitation 
of Mandelle’s sympathy, Sevens found himself digress¬ 
ing from the topic he had come to discuss and revert¬ 
ing to that other and sorer topic which lay closer to 
his bruised emotions. His face was still stamped 



84 ALIAS RED RYAN 

with the after-markings of such rebellion and panic as 
attack and demoralize a man’s reason and the tremour 
of his hand proclaimed the recent shaking of an 
equinoctial storm at the centre of his nerves. 

While they still sat at table the man who had been 
intently, though unobtrusively, watching them, rose 
and left the restaurant. He had seen enough. 

“The trusted employee is wobbling,” he told him¬ 
self as he went out. “The prospect is ripe, and I see 
the way to get to him.” 


CHAPTER VH 


H AVING plumbed, as he believed, the depths 
of depression, Barbour Sevens had swung to 
a short-lived reaction of specious cheerful¬ 
ness. Action of any sort has its tonic properties and 
Sevens had sought action in computing to dime and 
penny the forces of such financial reserves as he could, 
under the pressure of need, throw into the breach. 
There were the two low-denomination Liberty bonds 
and the cash surrender value of the voracious life 
insurance policy which he had doggedly kept alive 
on its diet of premiums since his marriage. Sacrific¬ 
ing it was like looting a temple, yet resolve brought 
the feeling of turning at bay to face an enemy, and 
an enemy faced loses something of its fearsomeness. 
In his pockets too were bright-coloured folders 
from a travel bureau proclaiming the charm and 
healing magic of certain mid-south resorts where 
the mocking birds sing in winter and the pictures 
showed women in sports clothes and men playing 
polo. 

Hope had called up to say that her little sister 
Faith had unexpectedly arrived for a brief visit, 
and the pig-tailed child must not read his despair. 

85 


86 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


A fierce pride made it imperative that he should not 
stand branded as a failure in the eyes of even so young 
a representative of Hope’s family. 

But when he entered his apartment he came 
up short in astonishment, for his sister-in-law had, 
in the eighteen months since he had seen her, stolen 
a march on him. She was no longer the freckled kid, 
specializing in assorted mischief, but a transformed 
young creature grown into a rather dazzling and 
willowy beauty of first womanhood. 

That was a situation he could ordinarily have met 
with a delighted laughter. Now it chilled and 
shocked him with an almost tragic realization of con¬ 
trast, because it was as though this were not Faith at 
whom he was looking, but Hope, as she had stood, 
vividly colourful and youthfully palpitant in the pine 
woods on that day a few years back; as if, in the dead¬ 
liness of parallel, he read how the years had touched 
and frosted the greater loveliness of his wife, and how 
sickness had paled her bloom. To his own heart he 
laid the blame for the agencies that had wrought this 
change. For a shaken moment, he could hear again 
the whisper of the wind through the pines, the voice 
of the sky-drifting gulls. He remembered the con¬ 
fident boast, which he had failed to realize, “Then 
it will be our Beverly Brothers.” 

“What do you think of me?” Faith demanded. 
“You haven’t seen me since I was a mere child, 
have you?” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


87 


“I think,” he responded with a mock gravity, 
“ that you bear the weight of your years remarkably 
well. I suppose you want me to be brutally honest 
in my criticism, don’t you?” 

“You can be reasonably honest,” she retorted, 
“but let your criticism be constructive.” 

“I don’t think,” he ruled judicially, “you’ll ever 
hold a candle to your sister. But I believe you’ll 
acquit yourself creditably in competition with your 
own class.” 

“And what might my ‘own class’ be?” she de¬ 
manded. 

“All the other beatitudes—except Hope,” he 
made generous admission. “Except for her, the 
sky’s the limit.” 

Outwardly it was a gay dinner, but the strain of 
its forced mirthfulness weighed on Barbour Sevens, 
whose spirits had ebbed with re-awakened thought of 
his own failure, and when Faith had begun putting 
jazz records on the phonograph, he slipped away for 
the burning out of his restlessness in exercise along 
streets that now lay snow-blanketed. 

His steps carried him from Tenth Street, in which 
stood his own apartment house, to Fifth Avenue, 
where the arc lights were like opals, each circled with 
its halo through the snow-mist. He walked south 
toward the white solidity of the Arch and Washington 
Square, and as he passed the lighted doorway and 
pavement canopy of the Brevoort, he realized that a 



88 ALIAS RED RYAN 

man had fallen into step with him and was accosting 
him. 

“ May I have a word or two with you, Mr. Sevens?” 
came the courteous inquiry, and Sevens, racking his 
brain in the embarrassment of a futile effort at rec¬ 
ognition, responded vaguely: 

“Surely . . . I'm sorry, but I fail to place you, 

somehow.” 

The other man laughed. 

“That’s pardonable enough. You’ve never met 
me before. Shall we take a turn over there across the 
Square while I explain?” 

Puzzled, yet with only a tepid interest, and follow¬ 
ing the path of least resistance. Sevens nodded his 
acquiescence. 

The two had crossed the snowy area of asphalt and 
passed around the Arch before the stranger spoke 
again. When he did so, his words were couched in 
a calmness that contradicted their startling purport, 
and Sevens halted to draw back and scrutinize his 
companion through incredulous eyes. 

“I know more about you than you would suspect, 
Mr. Sevens, because I’ve made it my business to find 
out. My profession makes exactions of that sort. 
You see, I’m a crook.” 

“A crook?” echoed Sevens. Then in an unrecep- 
tive tone he inquired, “ What do you want with me?” 

“That takes a bit of explaining, but first let me 
say, though you don’t look like a timid man, that 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


89 


I’ve no idea of trying to victimize you. We talk 
under a flag of truce and you needn’t have any 
anxiety. ” 

“I haven’t,” retorted Sevens shortly. “But I’m 
sure you’re wasting your time and mine.” 

“I won’t waste much, Mr. Sevens. That’s a 
matter I guard against. , You are asking yourself, 
‘Why does a total stranger introduce himself with a 
confession of dishonesty and permit me to study his 
appearance?’ I’ll answer that question this way: 
I make the declaration because we can go no farther 
until it is understood. As for the second matter, 
I might walk into any police station in New \ork 
to-night as safely as yourself. Headquarters has no 
dossier recorded opposite my name—no thumb-tracks 
or Rogues’ Gallery portrait. Whatever statement you 
might make to the desk sergeant, assuming that you 
went with me for that purpose, would be hearsay. ” 

“You are interesting at least.” 

“I hope to be more so. Have you arranged yet to 

send Mrs. Sevens south?” 

Barbour started in fresh surprise, then he halted 

in his tracks. “What the devil-” he began, and 

broke off short. 

“I had a sister similarly threatened,” the stranger 
went on meditatively, “and the long-leaf pine coun¬ 
try of South Carolina worked such wonders for her 
that—given the chance—I never fail to say a word 
for that climate.” 





90 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


He paused, then suggested with an abrupt change 
of tone, “Suppose we go into one of these Greenwich 
Village tea rooms and sit down with a table between 
us. At this hour the place won’t be over-crowded 
and what habitues are there will be deep in radicalism 
and paranoiac art.” 

Barbour Sevens nodded. Life for forty-eight 
hours had partaken of the garishness and grotesquerie 
of nightmare. This business stood on all fours with 
the general sense of unreality, and he found himself, 
after a short walk through the irregular angling of 
streets west of the Square, turning in at a place which 
had once been a livery stable and which now seemed 
only half converted in spirit to its new destiny of 
human entertainment. 

The self-confessed crook might have offered to 
lead his companion a few blocks east, instead of west, 
into dingy places that smacked more sordidly of the 
underworld, but it was significant of his methods 
that he made no such proposal. 

Sitting in a corner booth with a hum of talk coming 
from the long table at the room’s centre. Sevens had a 
better opportunity of observing his man, and though 
he availed himself of it to the point of candid staring, 
his companion seemed in no degree disturbed. The 
stranger was middle-aged and it occurred to Sevens 
that any description of him would have been difficult. 
His clothes and his features were alike well modelled 
and inconspicuous. In any business house down- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


91 


town, or in any church along the Avenue, you might 
have found his double, and Sevens, seeking to fix the 
portrait in his mind, found no distinctive handle 
by which to grasp and retain a definite impression. 

The stranger must have read his thought, for he 
smiled. “You are sizing me up,” he commented 
urbanely. “You will notice that I am extraordinari¬ 
ly ordinary—uncommonly common. If six casual 
witnesses undertook to identify me from memory, 
they would be apt to contradict one another in six 
separate ways. You, for example, would stand out as 
an individual in a crowd. I would sink into it. 
You’re a distinctive human model . . . I’m a 

human Ford, and that’s an advantage in my busi¬ 
ness.” 

At the last word Sevens glanced somewhat anx¬ 
iously about him and again the other laughed quietly. 

“Don’t be disturbed,” he reassured. “There is 
no safer place for confidential talk than a spot where 
everyone else is also talking—if one guards one’s 
play of expression. Our fellow guests are passion¬ 
ately in earnest—as only trivial people can be. 
They’re not thinking of us.” 

“I begin to suspect,” suggested Sevens drily, 
“that your whole attitude is a hoax, and that you 
are staging some sort of cumbersome joke. If so, 
I don’t feel like joking. You don’t talk like a 

crook.” 

“That is why,” interrupted his companion, “they 


92 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


haven’t my thumb-tracks and portrait at head¬ 
quarters. There are consulting lawyers who never 
go into court. I’m a consulting crook who never 
breaks in and steals. I only confer and direct—and 
in these days the commander-in-chief doesn’t operate 
on the firing line.” 

The stranger began to talk. His was an almost 
psychic faculty for suiting and focussing his plea to 
the mood of the listener, and he knew his present 
listener to be crowded between closing jaws of anx¬ 
ieties and resentments. Upon those anxieties and 
resentments, as upon the frets of a violin, the speaker 
played, and in his conversation there was nothing 
of mediocrity. At times it touched the fringes of 
eloquence. This man would have made a success in 
the pulpit—and he was in the pulpit now, though 
his text was one suited to the devil’s advocate. 

Switching with abrupt ease from the diction of well- 
chosen words to the crude vigour of a sort of argot, he 
summed up: 

‘'As I see it, you’ve been gypped and foxed by this 
man-driver you work for. Now, with a question of 
life and death, perhaps, for your wife, hanging on a 
little money and a little time, this skunk insists on 
exploiting you without kicking in in the pay envelope. 
You stand for it because you can’t ethically enforce 
your rights. My proposition is the primitively sim¬ 
ple one of cutting the Gordian Knot. With inside 
help we can make a haul there that’s worth the gam- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


93 


ble. By supplying that inside help you can remedy 
your situation. Since you’re an outsider we’re ready 
to fix your share definitely—” he paused and added 
slowly—“at five thousand cash. Does it tempt 
you?” 

Sevens sat with a sudden dewing of his temples 
and a paling of his cheeks. The instinct of all his 
training and the code of decent generations behind 
him required of him an instant and indignant de¬ 
nunciation of this man and this man’s overtures. 
Yet somehow it seemed impossible to move because 
of an unaccountable torpor of amazement and he 
heard his own voice replying, with none of the ring¬ 
ing force that it should have held, but with the un¬ 
convincing flatness of perfunctory habit: 

“No ... It doesn’t tempt me.” 

His companion spread his hands in a gesture of 
acceptance. 

“That ought to settle it,” he said easily. “It 
would settle it—except, my friend, you’re lying. 
Your ‘get thee behind me, Satan,’ comes from the 
lips out, and comes feebly. Your heart knows that 
your loyalty to Beverly Brothers is a convention only 
and your loyalty to your wife is the tap-root of your 
life. Your heart knows you’ve got to choose between 
them. Your head knows that even Blackstone says 
it’s no crime to steal back your own from a thief— 
and this man Shell is a thief who has plundered you 
of much more than this five thousand.” 



94 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Sevens raised a hand in a gesture meant to be per¬ 
emptory, but it somehow failed of its force. 

“ What is to prevent me from giving you over as a 
bribe offerer?” he demanded shortly. 

“You have yet nothing to tell that is not the 
merest hearsay,” came the calm response. “You 
yourself said it smelt of hoax and should you seek 
tangible evidence of evil associations by having me 
shadowed you would learn nothing. That I assure 
you is true, and you are welcome to verify it by ex¬ 
periment. ” 

Sevens sat silent for a time, as though the spell 
of some hypnotic force was choking off the repudia¬ 
tion which he ought to be voicing. He saw no ad¬ 
vantage in heroics. 

“I wouldn’t advise your going crooked—profes¬ 
sionally,” he heard the other voice making meditative 
announcement. “I don’t think you’d succeed at it. 
I’m merely suggesting that on one occasion and one 
only, you endanger your amateur standing by taking 
money for playing the game. Your part would be 
prepared for you by us and reasonably safeguarded 
by us. It wouldn’t be difficult.” 

Barbour pushed back his chair. 

“Your time has been wasted,” he announced with 
a cold and low-voiced fury which sounded futile in his 
own ears. “I thought an hour ago that I’d commit 
murder to get money and get it quick, but-” 

“But now, when the proposition becomes concrete, 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


95 


you feel the recoil of a New England conscience,” 
the other finished for him. “Very well, then. 
That’s that.” 

Sevens rose and unceremoniously left the place, 
but he found his companion still walking at his side. 
His own hands were clenched in his overcoat pockets 
and his jaw was rigidly set. The other talked but he 
did not answer and when the two had come to the 
door of his apartment house, Barbour Sevens fell 
to trembling as with a nervous chill. 

“Good-bye,” he said perfunctorily. 

“It’s not just good-bye to me, ” observed the other. 
“It’s good-bye to five thousand iron men. Maybe 
it’s the beginning of good-bye—to more.” 

Sevens’s nails bit into his palms. He licked his 
lips with his tongue. “Hold on,” he gasped. 
“Just a moment.” One could not guess from his 
manner whether he was bent on assaulting the other 
or surrendering to his persuasion, but his companion 
answered easily: 

“I’m waiting.” 

Barbour Sevens stood there with his face working 
spasmodically. 

“After all,” he murmured half aloud, “it was 
practically stolen from me—and her.” 

“Actually stolen—in all but form. As ruthlessly 
filched as if it had been taken at the pistol- 
point,” prompted the other. 

The trembling in Sevens’s legs and body suddenly 




96 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

stopped. His pocketed hand unclenched itself and 
came out. It was steady, and slowly he thrust it out. 

“You’re on,” he said. “But it must be done 
quickly.” 

“If you’ll take a short stroll—alone—in this same 
neighbourhood each evening for the rest of this week,” 
said the stranger promptly, I’ll drop into step with 
you again in a night or two and we’ll arrange to 
carry on.” 

He paused, then added quietly: “If you undertake 
to have me watched, I’ll have my own way of know¬ 
ing—and I won’t be there.” 



CHAPTER Vm 


F OR years Barbour Sevens had spent the office 
hours of every business day in the Fifth Avenue 
establishment of Beverly Brothers, separated 
by a door, which usually stood open, from the ma¬ 
hogany-panelled sanctum of the chief. 

Two days ago Tom Shell would have said that the 
face of his assistant had nothing surprising to offer 
him. He would have said that he knew this man 
inside out, and could read his thoughts forward and 
backward. Since then each day had shaken that 
comfortably rooted conviction. Day before yester¬ 
day that face had flared with the eruptive fires of a 
supposedly extinct volcano. Yesterday it had been 
haggard and tortured, seemingly cowed, only to 
break unexpectedly into gusts of weakly violent 
passion, and this morning it was the stony face of a 
Sphinx. This morning Sevens had come into the 
office with only a nod and a brief “Good morning/’ 
and had addressed himself to the first of his tasks 
with a direct energy that told nothing of his mood. 

But when he had finished his morning dictation, 
he sat down at the typewriter beside his desk, and for 
a brief time his fingers pounded rapidly on the keys. 

97 



98 ALIAS RED RYAN 

After ten minutes of that, he read over the result of 
his activity, made a hasty correction or two in pencil, 
and came into Shell’s office, closing the door quietly 
behind him. The chief glanced up, grunting inter¬ 
rogatively, and Sevens sat down. 

“It has come to my attention,” he announced 
crisply, “that an employee of this concern has been 
conducting himself in a fashion which calls for your 
consideration. ” 

Shell turned in his swivel chair attentively to face 
his companion. 

“How’s that?” he inquired. 

“I’ve made a brief statement of facts,” declared 
the younger man, “ in the form of a typed memoran¬ 
dum. Please read it through before you make any 
comment. It calls for complete digestion.” 

Shell reached out a hand for the proffered paper 
and adjusted his shell-rimmed glasses, but at the 
end of the first paragraph, his face lost its stolid 
self-complacency and he stopped reading to stare 
over the margin in baffled incredulity. 

“Is this a j-joke?” he demanded, “or s-softening 
of the brain?” 

“Be good enough to read it through,” prompted 
Sevens imperatively, “and judge for yourself.” 

Shell went back to the beginning as though second 
sight might add to the comprehensible quality of a 
mystifying screed and read the initial paragraph 
twice. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


99 


Re Investigation of robbery epidemic: Memo of facts brought 
to attention of Mr. Shell. Our Mr. Sevens after some years of 
service as confidential and advisory assistant to the head of the 
concern, made demand for such promotion as he conceived was 
due him—without result. Our Mr. Sevens became somewhat 
violent in the assertion of his rights as he saw them, and used 
language at the Loyal League Club, where the two had met after 
luncheon, which Mr. Shell found objectionable. 

“I don’t see anything here that’s news to me,” 
broke out Shell irascibly, and the younger man in¬ 
sisted grimly, 

“Go on. You will.” 

Mr. Sevens pressed his urgent need of money, made intensive 
by the verdict of a pulmonary specialist that Mrs. Sevens must 
go south and take a cure which Mr. Sevens’s present salary does 
not permit. The argument partook of the character of a quarrel 
and remained unsettled. 

Again the reader looked up from his document, 
then, repressing an impulse of protest, resumed his 
perusal. 

The need having arisen of some course to galvanize into ef¬ 
fectiveness the efforts of the police in curbing the present 
epidemic of robberies upon fur warehouses, a conference was 
arranged among members of prominent firms and Mr. Sevens 
was designated by Mr. Shell to give attention to this matter 
for Beverly Brothers. On the night of January 12th, Mr. Sevens 
left his apartment in West Tenth Street and at Eighth Street and 
Fifth Avenue he was accosted by a stranger, who asked to be 
allowed to talk with him. Mr. Sevens and the stranger walked 


> 


100 ALIAS RED RYAN 

together in Washington Square and went from there to the ‘Old 
Bam Tea Room” west of the Square. There the stranger an¬ 
nounced to Mr. Sevens that he was associated with an organiza¬ 
tion of fur thieves, though safely detached from them by any ties 
of incriminating evidence. He argued with Mr. Sevens that 
Beverly Brothers had in effect robbed him of his dues, and 
offered him a cash sum of $5,000 to cooperate as inside man in an 
effort to rob one or more of the Beverly Brothers Warehouses 
said payment being contingent on success. 

Barbour saw the perplexity in the eyes of his supe¬ 
rior harden into amazed indignation, saw him gulp 
excitedly and he himself interpolated, “Go on, there 
is more surprising matter to come.” 

It was represented to Mr. Sevens that the part which he would 
be called upon to play would involve only slight personal risk. 
Mr. Sevens indignantly repudiated the proposition in the tea room 
—but later by the door of his own apartment house underwent a 
change of heart and agreed to enter into such a conspiracy in 
which he would be schooled in his proposed duties as an accessory 
before the fact. 

Tom Shell dropped the paper on his desk as though 
its touch had scorched his fingers, and shoved a cut 
glass paper weight over its edge. His lips twitched 
grotesquely under the paroxysm of fury that swept 
him, and when he spoke his impediment of speech 
tattered his words into almost unrecognizable rags 
of sound. 

“Wh-wh-what th-th-the hell does th-this mean?” 

Barbour leaned forward in his chair and a some- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 101 

what enigmatical ghost of a smile played around his 
lip corners. 

“It means,” he said slowly, “that yesterday you 
asked me whether I had been offered other employ¬ 
ment and I said no. Since then I have been offered 
other employment.” 

For an instant the chief’s hand went out and hov¬ 
ered over a push button on his desk, but there it hung 
suspended while his face became livid with rage. 

“D-d-do you know what th-they do with black¬ 
mailers in New York?” he spat out furiously. “D-d- 
d-do you think you can bull-doze me into raising your 
salary by th-threatening to-to rob me?” 

There was a quick-flashing thrust of Barbour’s 
right hand, though he did not move the rest of his 
body. He caught up the paper from the desk while 
Shell half rose out of his chair in an impulse to 
seize it back. Reflecting that the call button was 
still there and held, too, by something in the other’s 
face, the chief sank back and sat panting in excited 
silence. 

Sevens drew out the sliding flap of the mahogany 
desk and, laying down the sheet of his typed mem¬ 
orandum, deliberately inscribed upon it a post¬ 
script with his fountain pen: “Barbour Sevens, hav¬ 
ing read the foregoing statement, hereby makes full 
confession of its truth. Signed, Barbour Sevens. ” 

Having done that surprising thing, the lieutenant 
spread the document once more before his chief and 


102 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


said quietly, “ When a man undertakes blackmail, he 
doesn’t start by signing and delivering a confession. ” 

Shell slumped lower in his seat. His face went 
from its livid anger into the brick red of mortification. 

“N-n-no, of course not,” he stammered. “I 
should have known. I apologize, but for God’s 
sake explain.” 

Sevens was examining the point of his fountain 
pen. Suddenly he demanded, “Do you want me to 
go on with it? Do you want me to try matching my 
wits against these fellows that the police can’t or 
won’t bag? There’s just a chance that I might be 
able to decoy them and trap them. It’s just a slim 
chance but it’s up to you. At least that occurred, 
to me last night as I was about to part with this 
crime-promoter—and I didn’t close the door on the 
possibility. ” 

“You mean that you’d be willing to try?” 

Barbour nodded and his voice was grim as he 
amplified: 

“It might be done . . . and it might not. 

They aren’t fools, you know. They have already 
proven that they are either cleverer than the police 
—or protected by the police.” 

“This g-gang’s at war with us.” Shell rose abruptly 
and fell to pacing the floor. “We are leaders in our 
business and must act as leaders ... If they’ve 
approached you, it’s m-more than likely they’ve got 
inside men in other houses. Sooner or 1-later some of 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


103 


those men might come to us as employees—p-perhaps 
as n-night watchmen, even. It’s up to us to unravel 
this thing—if we can. You’ve got a good head on 
your shoulders, Sevens, and you’ve got nerve. I 
believe you’re the man to do it. ” 

Sevens had gone to the window and now he turned 
with his back against it and spoke in the clipped 
syllables of clarity. 

“This may sound like blackmail, too. If it does, 
construe it so and be damned. I’ve got a wife whose 
life can be saved now; whose health can be restored. 
Six months from now it may be too late. She has no 
support except me—and yesterday I arranged to turn 
in my life insurance policy for its cash surrender 
value. I did that to get her South. It won’t 
keep her there long. What are you going to do for 
my wife if—they get me?” 

“Get you? They won’t get you, Sevens. You 
mustn’t take too great a risk, of course.” 

Sevens was still standing with his back against the 
window. He drew out a case and lighted a cigarette, 
while a somewhat ironic smile glinted in his eyes. 

“Either I drop the matter where it stands,” he 
announced bluntly, “or I play the game out—as it 
develops, and it’s not likely to develop into a pink tea.” 

“Wh-what do you suggest then?” 

“Mr. Shell,” said the subordinate with an impres¬ 
sive quiet, “last night I felt desperate enough to 
commit any crime to raise money, and the things that 



104 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


made me desperate haven’t changed—but I found 
that a man’s inherited code of decency isn’t a suit 
of clothes to be discarded at will. It’s a coat of skin 
and it sticks. I claim no credit. I’m merely re¬ 
porting the result of an experiment. I didn’t smash 
the crook who took me for his own dirty kind . . . 

instead of that I stalled.” 

“Yes, I understand that, now. I ought to have 
under-s-stood it all along.” 

“Well, I’m not a hypocrite, Mr. Shell. I think 

that spokesman for the high-binders came fairly 

near stating the case when he said that if I robbed 

you I’d only be stealing back what you’ve stolen from 
99 

me. 

“ S-s-sevens, ” burst out Shell, “th-that’s intoler¬ 
able . . . No m-m-man can accuse me-” 

Sevens shrugged his shoulders. 

“I don’t claim to be infallible. I may be wrong, 
but it’s what I feel . . . None the less I’m em¬ 

ployed by Beverly Brothers and it happens that when 
the attack is ordered a man can’t quit—until the 
attack is over.” 

“That’s the way t-to t-talk. Sevens. That’s what 
I'd expect of you.” 

“Thank you.” The acknowledgment was quietly 
sardonic. “But that brings us back to the same 
starting point. You say they won’t get me. Don’t 
make any mistake. There is a very good chance that 
they will get me. This is a well-organized gang of 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


105 


highly trained professionals . . . and their fight¬ 

ing ethics aren’t pretty. I’ve got to feel my way as 
I go . . . and feel it largely in the dark . . . 

and if my foot slips, there’s my wife to be thought of.” 

“Of course, of course,” acceded Shell. “You say 
you arranged to c-casli in your insurance p-p-policy. 
D-don’t do it. The company will sup-p-ply you with 
funds for your present needs.” 

“The company must do better than that, Mr. 
Shell,” Barbour announced calmly. “The company 
must insure me for $50,000 against death or accident, 
naming my wife as the beneficiary—for the space of 
one year. That year will see me through this hazard. 
You see my drift, don’t you? I ask nothing for my¬ 
self, and for this sort of work I wouldn’t accept extra 
pay—but if I die—” he broke off and added with a 
touch of bitterness in his voice—“perhaps she’d have 
more money than I could earn for her by living. ” 

Shell sat at his desk and rapped upon it with a 
pencil, his forehead corrugated. He figured for a few 
minutes on a desk pad, multiplying and dividing 
rapidly. Then he swung the swivel and leaned back. 

“That’s fair enough,” he declared, “and as to 
salary increase, we’ll talk about it again and open- 
mindedly when this thing is ended up. Does that 
satisfy you?” 

Sevens nodded. 

“So far so good,” he agreed, “but there’s one 
thing more, one very important thing. I’ve got to 




106 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


go into this conspiracy deep enough—seemingly— 
to satisfy these crooks that I’m with them up to the 
hilt. I may have to do decidedly incriminating 
things. If by any chance I’m unable to speak for 
myself I’ve got to rely on you to clear my reputa¬ 
tion.” 

“You may rely on me. There’s n-never been any 
question of m-my trusting you. You c-can trust me, 
too.” 

“You’re the one person in the world who knows 
why I’m doing this,” insisted Sevens. “You’re 
the one person in the world who can show that I 
haven’t actually gone into a felonious partnership.” 

Shell held out his hand but now it was his face 
that was most thoughtful. “You have my word. 
Still, there ought to be someone else who knows,” 
he said soberly, “I’m in g-good health to-day—b-but 
I might die to-night. Our lawyers are civil p-practi- 
tioners and this isn’t in their line. Do you know 
a good criminal lawyer who c-can hold his tongue? 
If the insurance p-people knew you were undertak¬ 
ing this business, th-they might make a fuss; might 
call it an extra hazard. ” 

Sevens tossed away his cigarette. 

“A classmate in college came to see me the night 
before last,” he said tentatively. “I lunched with 
him yesterday, and, oddly enough, he’s working on 
this robbery investigation himself . . . I’d be 

willing to trust him. His name is Joe Mandelle. ” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


107 


Shell acted promptly. He touched the push but¬ 
ton on his desk and when a stenographer answered 
the call he ordered shortly, “Get Mr. Joseph Man- 
delle, attorney, on the wire and find out whether he 
can call here at once.” Then he turned back to 
Barbour. 

“You g-go into this with a free hand, Sevens,” 
he announced. “B-b-but to-night you and I must 
visit the warehouses and form our own impressions 
about the night watchmen. I’ll take the Twenty- 
seventh Street house and you can take Thirtieth 
Street and the Bronx. Perhaps we’ll want to hire 
some extra men later . . . but to-night we m- 

must satisfy ourselves of their morale. You have 
your k-keys, I suppose?” 

Forty minutes later, while the two still talked, a 
light tap on the door interrupted them and Shell’s 
secretary announced, “Mr. Mandelle is here. He 
says he has an appointment.” 

“Show him in,” ordered Shell crisply, “and don’t 
let us be interrupted.” 


CHAPTER IX 


F ROM his conference at Beverly Brothers, Joe 
Mandelle proceeded directly to the downtown 
office which bore his own name on its ground- 
glass door and went to the back of his suite where he 
closed himself into a small room hardly larger than a 
generously proportioned linen closet. It was a room 
suited to and sometimes used for confidential con¬ 
sultation, for, with its door closed, it was ap¬ 
proximately sound-proof. 

This quality of the small room was not one which 
had specifically recommended it to its tenant for 
any reason of ultra caution. Mr. Mandelle had 
valued its sound-deadening construction for a mores 
prosaic reason. He was accustomed to dictate both 
letters and briefs on the talking machine and here 
he could let his voice out forensically without having 
it sound noisily through the suite. 

Now he sat down before the instrument, made some 
slight adjustment of its running-gear mechanism, and 
began talking clearly into the mouthpiece. After 
a little Mr. Mandelle emerged and spoke to his 
stenographer. 

“Miss Statewell,” he directed, “you will find 

108 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


109 


two letters on the records standing by the talk¬ 
ing machine that I’d like to have transcribed at 
once. ” 

It occurred to Miss Statewell that her employer 
must be preoccupied, for he had turned away from 
her desk before he added in afterthought, ‘*1 seem to 
have used up all the fresh phonograph records. Are 
there any more?” 

“No, Mr. Mandelle,” she answered, “but there’s a 
box of used records ready to be re-shaved.” 

Mr. Mandelle nodded. 

“I wish you’d send them out to Jennings . 
and ask him to get them back for use again as soon 
as he can. ” 

When the stenographer laid the letters on Mr. 
Mandelle’s desk for his signature he glanced at them 
and appended his name. They were routine com¬ 
munications and uninteresting. Mr. Mandelle, as 
it happened, did not use the private extension of his 
telephone that day and he received no callers with 
whom he talked privately. He sat for some time 
studying the record of a case at bar, with his office 
door open, but occasionally he dropped the thick 
sheaf of depositions and let his glance stray medita¬ 
tively out through the window upon a prospect 
limited by a canyon steepness of walls. He seemed 
deeply preoccupied and perhaps a little worried, 
as though some problem remained unsolved, which 
grew in complication with the passing of time. 


110 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Barbour Sevens, through the same day, found his 
spirits steadily rising, with the definite prospect of 
action. His troubles burdened him less morbidly 
and the sagging curve of his shoulders seemed to 
straighten to a hint of their old athletic erectness. 
At the dinner table that evening he spoke of Hope’s 
going South as a settled plan and gaily assured her 
that the marvel was made possible by Shell’s belated 
appreciation of his value, and by the meeting of his 
own terms. 

“I laid before him,” declared Barbour in mock 
boastfulness, “a statement in the nature of an ulti¬ 
matum. I said in effect, ‘May I not, under these 
circumstances, call attention to the peril of bank¬ 
ruptcy which would confront the firm if it lost so 
indispensable a guidance as mine!’” 

“Oh, Barb,” gasped his wife, “suppose he had 
refused. ” 

“Refused?” The lord of this narrow manor raised 
his brows incredulously. “Refusal would have 
spelled calamity for Beverly Brothers. He knew 
it and I knew it and he knew I knew it.” 

There is comedy in the make-believe egotism of an 
overly modest man, and the audience of two laughed 
immoderately, but as they rose from the table Sevens 
looked at his watch, and for just a moment, unob¬ 
served by the others, an expression of doubt and fore¬ 
boding passed across his face. 

“I’ve got to make a round of our warehouses 


ALIAS RED RYAN 111 

to-night,” he said with a yawn, "and look in on the 
night watchmen . . I may be late. ” 

When he kissed his wife good-bye he had to break 
his arms away from an embrace that closed hungrily 
about her and sought to linger. Then he left the 
apartment whistling, but the tune broke suddenly 
to silence before the elevator had answered his ring. 

Perhaps he was to meet the stranger again to-night. 
Perhaps not. 

There were certain things that he must remember, 
since to lose sight of them would be disastrous. He 
must make it clear to the man whose name he did not 
know that he came alone and unfollowed, and though 
that had seemed easy enough in prospect, it became 
difficult in practice as he approached the Arch. 

Fifth Avenue, even here at its quietest point and 
at this hour, was not a street he could cut off and 
post with the sign “no thoroughfare,” and for all 
his calculations he could not contrive to keep such an 
interval between himself and others that someone 
did not seem to be either just following or just 
preceding him. 

Ahead loomed the solid bulk of the Arch rising 
into a cold night sky of brittle hardness and beyond 
the Square, capping a broken silhouette of roofs, 
showed the yellow beacon of the electric cross atop 
the Judson Mission. 

In that space was approximate emptiness, into 
which Sevens went slowly, holding to the bright- 


112 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ened spots near the arc-lamps where he could be 
readily seen from a distance and could be perceived 
to be alone. He had walked back and forth until 
he almost decided that there was no use in waiting 
longer when he saw and recognized a figure coming 
under the Arch from Fifth Avenue. The stranger 
of last night's meeting seemed entirely free of that 
nervousness which obsessed Sevens, and as the young 
man waited, his confidence ebbed with a realization 
of his inferiority in guile and shrewdness. He felt 
like an amateur who has stepped rashly into a prize 
ring with a professional of tried reputation. But the 
stranger came up and grasped his hand with a re¬ 
assuring smile. 

“Hello, Sevens," he greeted easily. “I seem to 
have kept you waiting, but, as a matter of fact, I was 
here ahead of you." 

“Ahead of me?" Barbour, who had taken the 
hand with a sudden shiver of repugnance, put his 
question in a tone of surprise. 

“Yes. Before coming up to you, I reconnoitred 
somewhat thoroughly to make sure that you were 
actually alone. Safety first, you know." 

Sevens forced a laugh. 

“Well, you found me alone, didn't you?" 

“Alone and punctual. I'm glad you haven’t 
weakened." 

“I need the five thousand," answered Sevens drily, 
and the other nodded. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


113 


He thrust a gloved hand into a breast pocket and a 
small packet of paper rustled crisply as he drew it out. 

“As an evidence of solvency—and good faith,” 
he made comment, “I brought the—honorarium 
along to show you.” 

Sevens caught the engraving of bank notes, 
though he was not invited to finger or count them. 
On that which he saw he read the impressive de¬ 
nomination, one thousand dollars, and there were 
other bills under that. 

“Yours when you earn it,” laughed the man who 
now thrust his bank notes back into his pocket, and 
with a well-simulated tremor of eagerness in his voice, 
Barbour demanded, “When do I get my chance?” 

“I wish it could be at once,” his companion replied 
seriously; “but it can’t be this week. Time judi¬ 
ciously spent ahead often means time saved hereafter. 

He paused a moment, then added grimly, “And 
the time hereafter might be up the river. ” 

The two strolled about the four sides of the Square 
—for now the ambassador of crookdom made no 
suggestion of a cafe table—while the elder outlined 
a skeleton of plan and imparted rudiments of in¬ 
struction. 

“Some things I have already done in the interest 
of promptness,” he vouchsafed. “A representative 
of ours, under the guise of a buyer from the Middle 
West, has been inspecting skins at your warehouses 
and he’s drawn a working plan of the premises.” 




114 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“When was that done? ” demanded Sevens, but the 
other did not tell him. 

“I might as well confess that I’m scared,” an¬ 
nounced the employee of Beverly Brothers abruptly. 
“Fm as nervous as a cat ... I want to get 
my wife South ... I told you I was coming 
through, but I’m fretting to have it over with. Can’t 
you give me some idea of when it is to be?” 

“I’m outlining your duties to-night. That ought 
to prove to you that we aren’t dallying—the actual 
coup must wait a while. The commander who at¬ 
tacks prematurely invites disaster.” 

Sevens felt an inward leap of elation. This man’s 
boldness was indisputable, and it was a boldness of 
one sure of his own judgment. Evidently he was 
gambling on his ability to read character, and this 
time he was reading it amiss. 

“When the time comes,” continued his instructor, 
“your role will be comparatively simple and com¬ 
paratively safe, but you must understand it and 
carry it out without a hitch. ” 

“Go ahead,” prompted Barbour. “Outline it to 
me. ” 

“ When we go to the warehouse, you go with us— 
and open the door. That saves the need of breaking 
it in—and gives us leisure to work free from the 
unnerving racket of the burglar alarm.” 

“Yes, I’ve got that.” 

“On some reasonable pretext you get rid of the 


ALIAS RED RYAN 115 

watchman for a while. I suppose you can manage 
that?” 

“That’s easy, too,” responded Sevens with seem¬ 
ingly ready enthusiasm. “I often do night work 
at the warehouses and when I do I usually let the 
watchmen step out for a short period of recess.” 

“Good,” the other man smiled. “We are trust¬ 
ing you tolerably far,” he made grave reminder. 
“But it’s only honest to have our working basis clear¬ 
ly understood. From the moment we start over the 
top, there will be an eye on you every instant. If 
at any point you try to run out on us you will be 
killed with neatness and dispatch.” 

“That,” assented the pretended convert calmly, 
“is understood. Proceed with the next item.” 

“When the watchman has gone, the rest of the 
boys, whom you will not see until then, will enter 
the place and go straight to the stuff we want. They 
will have been rehearsed and will move smoothly.” 

“Yes, go on.” 

There ensued fifteen minutes of crisply succinct 
detail, admirable in its sequence and upbuilding and, 
at its end, Sevens said thoughtfully, “It seems to 
me that everything you ask me to do might be ac¬ 
complished without me—if you had my door key. 
You are offering me five thousand to go along and 
turn that key. Where’s the joker?” 

But the instructor in crime shook his head and 
smiled indulgently. 



116 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“You are an apt pupil—but you’re still in a 
primary grade, Mr. Sevens,” he observed. “Your 
presence is indispensable aside from your value as a 
hostage. It saves the probable need of bumping 
off a night watchman and we have friends on the 
other side of the docket whom murder would alienate. 
Even if you betrayed us in advance, you could only 
queer our game, but betrayal on that night itself 
would ruin us. We should be nervous without you, 
Mr. Sevens.” - * 

“My mistake,” acknowledged Sevens. “I over¬ 
looked a material point. As you say, I’m still in a 
primary grade.” 

“We need you for another reason as well,” ampli¬ 
fied the instructor. “Once inside the door, un¬ 
disturbed working minutes are worth thousands to 
us, and admission by you instead of through a jim¬ 
mied door extends our available time from four or 
five minutes to fifteen at least.” 

The two strolling figures had walked twice about 
the perimeter of the Square, and now as they ap¬ 
proached the Arch again an empty taxi came slurring 
slowly along, its driver looking about him, watchful 
for a possible fare. 

The stranger glanced casually at the vehicle and 
as if reminded by it of something forgotten he sug¬ 
gested, “I must get uptown, and there are still 
several things to say to you. I’ve only scratched 
the surface, so far. Suppose we take that taxi and 


ALIAS RED RYAN 117 

talk as we go. I’ll have you set down at any point 
you name.” 

Sevens nodded amiably enough. Possibly some 
idea might be gainfully collected from noting at 
what point his instructor left him and once alone 
again he would drive on to the Bronx and interview 
the night watchman there. 

His companion hailed the cab and ordered briefly, 
“Up Fifth Avenue to the Plaza and drive slowly.” 

Sevens was reflecting with definite satisfaction 
that he had learned one useful thing this evening. 
The time for the proposed robbery was yet uncertain 
and that gave him increased opportunity and lati¬ 
tude for study. 

He wanted that latitude because in the robbery 
scheme as so far promulgated he saw what looked 
like a fatally clumsy defect—and this man was not a 
clumsy strategist. Presumably then that part of the 
plan, or perhaps various parts, had been stated only 
to mislead him, and for these possibilities he wanted 
the leisure of analysis. 

Suddenly Barbour’s companion rapped on the 
glass and shouted to the driver, “Hold on a minute.” 

Turning to Sevens he added in an undertone as if 
asking permission, “There’s a man I want a word 
with. Candidly, he’s been hovering near as a sort 
of bodyguard and strictly speaking I oughtn’t to let 
you see him, but I’ve got to trust you on some points 
and this will only delay us a moment.” 


118 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Sevens had caught a glimpse of a pedestrian turn* 
ing west from the Avenue on Twelfth Street, and now 
as the stranger instructed the chauffeur to overtake 
that figure, the younger man realized that his own 
impression had registered no detail except that the 
man on foot was conspicuously red-haired. When the 
car drew over to the curb, a quarter of the way along 
the crosstown block, it was between the lights and 
in an interval of semi-darkness. 

Barbour’s fellow passenger flung back the door of 
the taxi, which had not fully halted, just as it came 
abreast of the pedestrian, and the pedestrian turned 
and stood still in response to his hailing. 

Sevens had no opportunity to appraise the features 
of the man on the sidewalk. In height and breadth 
he was average, though well set up. In clothing he 
seemed inconspicuously well groomed, smooth of 
outline and texture. 

Between him and the man who had emerged from 
the car and who walked alongside as the machine 
still crept, a very few unheard words passed, then 
came a swift development for which Sevens found 
himself absurdly unprepared. 

Retrospective analysis served to explain the 
effect of this surprise in one way only. Sevens was 
looking forward to a battle of wits which would 
certainly tax his resources and quite possibly would 
defeat them—but it was in the sense of looking for¬ 
ward. One idea had become insidiously fixed in his 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


119 


mind, and that idea was that all this conferring was 
preliminary and that the actual issue lay in the fu¬ 
ture. So far he was largely drifting and forming im¬ 
pressions which he hoped later to digest. 

Suddenly the door of the taxi slammed and the 
passenger who had remained inside realized that a 
substitution had been effected with a sleight-of-hand 
celerity. The man who had been walking along the 
sidewalk sat beside him now, instead of the other, 
and the car, with no word to the driver, lurched 
forward as though shot from a catapult and was 
speeding westward. 

Certain things proclaim themselves for what they 
are without explanation or admonition, and Sevens 
knew that the pressure he felt against his left side was 
the muzzle of a pistol. 

His first realization was that the driver of this car 
needed no explicit orders. He had obviously been 
rehearsed in his role and was making good speed 
toward the avenues that lie closest to the North 
River docks, where things occasionally happen with 
unrestrained disdain of ordered codes. 


CHAPTER X 


B EFORE he had commanded his own voice for 
speech, and with the nuzzling caress of the 
weapon still proclaiming itself, Sevens heard 
a voice which he had never heard before speaking in 
monitory sharpness. 

“Easy now, old dear,” it enjoined. “Don’t make 
no false break. You tried to double-cross us to-day 
but you’re going to kick in just the same, see?” 

“Double-cross you?” Sevens was thinking hard 
and sparring for time under the stunning impact of 
surprise. 

“Yeah, double-cross us. You sized us up for a 
bunch of poor fish that you could play for come-ons. 
Now we’re pulling the stunt to-night instead of later. 
You’re out of the job as a pal, but you’re still in it as a 
handy man—and if you bobble, my orders are to 
croak you. Get that straight.” 

The elemental simplicity of the strategy dawned 
with sudden and illuminating fulness on Barbour 
Sevens. He had been given his instructions and now 
he was to be proffered no interval of counter-plan¬ 
ning. The gist of the strategy lay in that instanta¬ 
neous promptness of leaping from preface to climax. 

120 


ALIAS RED RYAN 121 

— > 

Unless he could improvise with electric swiftness 
some defense against this amazingly launched 
aggressive, the game was as good as lost. It was 
commendably simple in conception and execution— 
this thing they had done. It was all based on the 
one alternative of which he had taken no forethought. 
He had started out on the premise of disbelieving 
every statement made by crooked antagonists, and 
yet he had swallowed whole the almost irritated as¬ 
sertion of the ambassador from the underworld that 
the job couldn’t be carried through without delibera¬ 
tion; that it yet belonged to the future. Now he was 
being kidnapped and carried along willy-nilly. The 
taxicab was paralleling the waterfront as it lurched 
rapidly northward, and Sevens realized fully and 
with a blistering severity of assurance that the man 
at his side would shoot if he were called on to shoot. 
Something must be thought out under the pressure of 
need and thought out fast. Failing of a better 
solution, he must come to grips with his captor and 
chance the gun—but that was a last resort. In 
parley lay at least the gain of a few minutes for 
forced reflection and the slender chance of some for¬ 
tuitous advantage. 

It had been cold when he had started out from his 
apartment house and Sevens had buttoned his 
coat collar close about his throat. 

In so protecting himself against the sharp bite of 
the night he had done another thing, which had 


122 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


became habitual under like conditions. In order 
that he should not have to fumble later with gloved 
fingers under the thickness of his overcoat, he had 
transferred from his trousers pocket to his right- 
hand and outside pocket change for subway fare 
and two other objects—flat metal objects of small 
size—the street-door keys to the two warehouses he 
had meant to visit. 

Now the hand across the cab from the jailer stole 
into that pocket and palmed the keys. It was not 
difficult, nor would it be difficult to make a further 
disposition of them—provided he could mask his 
action under a semblance of talk, arresting enough 
to distract attention. 

He turned a steadied face to that of the gunman, 
which was rigid and truculent, and he managed to 
laugh. 

“Do you only go as far as double-crossing?” 
he inquired with the insolent assumption of pure 
bravado. “Haven’t you crooks any higher mathe¬ 
matics than that?” 

“How do you mean—higher mathematics?” The 
question was snarled out of twisting lip corners. 
“What’s the big idea? Trying to kid me?” 

“By no means,” replied Sevens gravely. “I got 
you the first time you said this wasn’t a joke. I’ve 
reason enough to be serious . . . You say I’m 

double-crossing, and you aren’t doing me full credit. 
I’m triple-crossing.” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ns 


He saw the man with the gun bend forward with a 
pricked interest which he at once stifled, leaning in¬ 
curiously back again. Sevens crossed his legs and 
let his hands rest idly on one ankle, in an attitude of 
counterfeited nonchalance. 

“I say I’m triple-crossing, ” he repeated. “Doesn’t 
that start your imagination to working?” 

“It don’t start nothing,” came the surly rejoinder. 
“And don’t you start nothing, neither—not if you’re 
half wise to what’s good for you.” 

“I’m only explaining,” went on Sevens patiently. 
“It was agreed that we were to work together on this 
deal—not wrangle among ourselves.” 

“And you snitched and double-crossed. That lets 
you out.” 

“I snitched and triple-crossed. How many times 
do I have to tell you that?” Sevens’s fingers, as they 
nursed his ankle, stirred a little—and the flat-shaped 
keys went inside his shoe top. 

“I snitched to Tom Shell and told him I was going 
into this business to trap the rest of you. By mak¬ 
ing that play, I got full permission from him to handle 
it my own way. This is my way.” 

“Your way? How do you mean, your way?” 

“I mean that I alibied myself with Beverly 
Brothers. Now I’m free of interference. I can 
work with you boys—and all that anybody will ever 
have on me will be the seeming fact that I wasn’t as 
clever as I thought. You fellows get what you went 


124 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


after—and Shell will only think that the game we 
framed up together flivvered.” 

The man with the pistol laughed. 

“You may double-cross and you may triple-cross, 
buddy, but you don’t four-time me. We wouldn’t 
believe you on oath now—and it wouldn’t pay us to 
believe you nohow.” 

“Why?” 

“It would cost us just five thousand grand to trust 
you for one reason—and that’s too high a price. ” 

“Five thousand grand?” 

“Sure. Where’s them higher mathematics of 
yours now? If we trusted you we’d have to split 
with you, wouldn’t we? When we catch you snitch¬ 
ing and strong-arm you through the job, we don’t 
owe you nothing. Chew on that, buddy.” 

The gun muzzle accentuated the point with an 
emphatic jab in the ribs. 

Sevens feigned a gasping outburst of spluttering 
rage. 

Indeed there was a kernel of genuine chagrin in 
the thought that flashed belatedly into his mind, a 
thought that made him feel absurd, futile, and out¬ 
pointed at every move in the game. 

“So that’s it,” he broke out. “You didn’t know 
I’d talked to Shell after all . . You just pulled 

this double-crossing stuff to give you an excuse for 
bilking me out of my share. It was only bluffing 
on deuces.” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


125 


To this assertion the other offered no reply except 
for a dangerous glint in his eye as he thrust his face 
forward. That glint brought home to his prisoner 
the conviction that in a certain type of gunman—a 
type here exemplified—the itch of the trigger comes 
like a wave of the drunkard’s thirst. It was as if 
instead of hanging back in fear of consequences, this 
man would actually welcome an excuse to fire. 

The car turned into a cross-street and Sevens knew 
that it was that on which one of the Beverly Brothers 
warehouses stood. A ticklish moment lay ahead 
for the captive but also it held a surprise for his 
captors if Sevens succeeded in carrying out the plan 
that had been suddenly born in his mind. He would 
find that he had lost his keys. The crooks would pre¬ 
sumably search him—and probably manhandle him 
as well, but if fortune played fair they would not find 
the keys and minutes wasted might count heavily in 
the result. He refused to think of himself. It was 
an unnerving prospect, but he had blundered and 
must bear the brunt of his own ineptitude, he must 
hold the door against easy access or any access with¬ 
out forcing it and sounding the burglar alarm. 

Then he found himself stepping out of the car with 
an arm linked through his own. He felt the pistol 
still against his side as the whispered warning “Steady 
now—no hobbling , 99 stole quietly to his ears. The 
street looked empty and normal save that some 
distance away and pointed west stood another car 


126 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


with purring motor, and somehow he felt, or im¬ 
agined, the presence of unseen men in darkened door¬ 
ways and entries. 

Now he and his companion stood at the door and 
with a sharp gaze bent upon him. Sevens began the 
farce of searching his pockets for his keys. As he 
did so, reacting to habit which often used that door 
in the day time when no lock held it, his left hand 
went to the knob—and to his amazement the door 
yielded and swung open without the need of being 
unlocked. 

For an instant Sevens stood dumbfounded, but it 
was only an instant. He felt an urgent pressure at 
his back impelling him forward and when he had 
come into the hall, he looked into the office. At the 
desk he saw, not yet aroused by any alarm, the seated 
figure of Tom Shell. 

Sevens realized with an ironic poignancy that his 
supreme resolution to defend the door by the pre¬ 
tense of having lost his keys had not even acquired 
the dignity of recognition. 

So far as the thieves had been able to judge, he had 
functioned as directed and, with the sureness of a 
well-rehearsed fire drill, each process of the planned 
invasion was going forward, step upon step. 

For Sevens, as for the hasheesh eater, moments 
became interminable stretches of time and he had 
eyes for the figure at the cluttered desk, a figure 
which had not yet turned or scented danger. His 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


m 


familiarity with the plan of that building was entire. 
He knew that back of this office, which lay to the 
right of the narrow hall, were the storerooms, two in 
number and communicating with the freight elevator 
in the rearmost. Somewhere in that building there 
might be an unsuspecting night watchman, or he 
might have been temporarily relieved from duty 
by Shell and have gone out. Sevens felt rather than 
heard the swift and unflurried passage of feet along 
the narrow hall toward the rear. He could not 
even be sure that he was not merely fancying them. 
If they were genuine, they told of the actual thieves 
going like hiving bees to the shelves that had been 
drawn and located in careful plans for their use by 
the size-up man who had worked in advance. 

He had not seen these men materialize out of dark¬ 
ness, but he knew they had come like jinns from the 
thick bottle of the night, and in the tense fragment 
of time that seemed protracted by his stress, his 
thoughts went racing until they were interrupted by 
that sensation with which he had already become 
familiar: the nudge of a pistol muzzle against his 
lower ribs. 

“Go on/’ prompted a ghost of edgy whisper in his 
ear. “Can the watchman.” 

Suddenly Sevens understood that in one respect 
the burglars had misread the signs and with under¬ 
standing came a flash of tenuous hope. Tom Shell 
was a fastidious man in the matter of dress, and not 


128 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


easily mistaken for a warehouse night watchman. 
Now that very fastidiousness had wrought a decep¬ 
tion. The desk upon which he had been at work was 
cluttered and grimy and before sitting down to it he 
had taken off his own coat and drawn on a shabby 
working jacket, left hanging on some hook by a minor 
employee. The house-breakers, as unprepared as 
Sevens himself to find the chief here where the 
chief so rarely came at such an hour, had mistaken 
him for the one man they had expected to encounter. 

Possibly Sevens, scraped his foot audibly on the 
floor, for at that instant Shell turned his head, pre¬ 
senting a face not yet alarmed but distinctly sur¬ 
prised. He saw his assistant overcoated and facing 
him while just behind his assistant stood another 
man whose appearance and dress were not in them¬ 
selves calculated to inspire suspicion. 

The significant fact that the stranger’s right hand 
was prodding the man at his front with an automatic 
pistol escaped notice because Sevens’s body screened 
that hand as did also the large pocket of the loose 
greatcoat. 

“Hullo, Sevens,” greeted Shell. “I thought you 
were taking the other two houses for inspection. 
Who’s your friend?” 

Sevens felt the pistol point jerk, then dig like a vi¬ 
cious spur against his side. The startled demonstra¬ 
tion told him that his bodyguard had suddenly 
assimilated the whole truth of the situation, and that 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


129 

he was now bent on dictating a disarming reply to 
Shell’s question. Barbour had little reason to hope 
that he could win through by any bluff but he felt that 
he had bungled and must somehow undo his error. . 

“I brought this gentleman with me, Mr. Shell,” 
he began in a conversational quietness of tone, and 
as he felt the muzzle ease away a little from his side, 
in relieved approval, he went on again in smooth 
tones that abruptly exploded in their effort to finish 
in time. 

“He’s a fur-thief, Shell. Beat it! Call the 
cops. ” 

He had seen a pistol lying near the chief’s hand— 
probably the watchman’s which the chief had been 
inspecting. He had hoped that for once by reason 
of past events Shell’s mind and hand might act 
quickly, and in concert—and as he spoke he himself 
leaped sidewise. He heard the gunman’s pistol 
bark in the same instant—and the bullet tore his 
coat, but to his disgust he saw, too, that his employer 
was standing still in the dumfounded paralysis of a 
thick-minded man confronting sudden and un¬ 
familiar peril. There was no instant help forth¬ 
coming from that quarter and Sevens lunged for the 
red-headed man, centring all of his energy and 
weight on a single drive of fist to jaw. 

It was creditably quick work, and the red-haired 
one took the belting wallop fair on the jaw-point of 
his snarling face—but the pistol had barked again in 



130 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


the part-second interval and Sevens heard the 
whine of the bullet in its passing as he crouched facing 
his adversary with his own back to the desk. 

Then there was a rush of feet from the rear, a 
startled shout which he placed as the challenge of the 
night watchman somewhere back there in the dark¬ 
ness and he caught, as he grappled with his adversary, 
more gunfire and the splintering of wood by bullets, 
sent after refugees who were scurrying through the 
narrow corridor. 

He saw things in confusion. The bared teeth of 
the man with whom he struggled gleamed white and 
desperate. The door that opened on the hallway, 
which was a channel of darkness, had been glass- 
topped and it splintered. Shadowy shapes were 
piling outward toward the street. 

Then as the tight-gripped fingers of the other 
loosened around the pistol butt, under a clenching 
that made the wrist bones crunch, something hap¬ 
pened and just as the weapon fell to the floor. Sevens 
gave back in a collapse of agony. His antagonist had 
sent a knee to his stomach and for an instant he was 
conscious only of a total disability of pain. 

But his adversary did not follow him up. He used 
the moment to wheel and rush for the street, and at 
the office door he collided with the racing watchman, 
who was borne backward from his balance and who 
let the refugee slip by to his escape. 

Then as Sevens straightened laboriously up, with 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


131 


some subsidence of his own pain, he saw the sagging 
jaw of the night watchman and the fixedness of his 
gaze past himself to something that held it across the 
room. 

Sevens had for those few crowded instants taken 
no thought of Shell. Now he turned slowly, follow¬ 
ing the hypnotized stare of the watchman, and saw 
his chief lying crumpled on the floor with eyes that 
had already rolled back in the signal of death. 

Out of Sevens’s own throat ran a strangling sound 
broken by his unrecovered breath. Sweating, dis¬ 
hevelled and paste-pale, he stood so unsteadily 
rocking on his feet that the night watchman took 
him by the elbows and piloted him to a chair into 
which he sank, still staring incredulously at the 
huddled shape on the floor. 

Then in the doorway appeared excited figures, and 
through them with drawn revolver a policeman 
elbowed his way. 

“What’s this?” came the unoriginal and inquisi¬ 
torial question from Patrolman Mahaffey. “What’s 
happened here?” 

He stood sweeping the place with his eyes, and 
while he waited for the answer which did not at once 
come, a brother officer appeared in the room and 
crossed hurriedly to straighten out the figure on the 
floor, and kneel with his ear at its breast. 


CHAPTER XI 


I T WAS to Sevens that the questioner first ad¬ 
dressed himself, and that was natural enough. 
A man was crumpled there in the inert grotesque¬ 
ness of death, and a pistol lay on the floor from 
which, like unclean incense, still stole the stench of 
fresh-burned nitro powder. In the chair, with jaw 
hanging and the dishevelment of recent struggle 
upon him, sat this other man—quite readily assign¬ 
able at first glance to the role of assailant. 

For that moment Sevens found himself unable to 
speak. He licked his lips and his hand gestured 
foolishly toward Shell, who needed no pointing out. 
No words came, and now as other policemen pushed 
through the crowd that the noise had summoned he 
made a figure upon which it was easy to hang a 
presumption of guilt. There had been other noises 
outside—the scurry of the getaway in the two waiting 
cars—the usual fusillade of the belatedly attacking 
police—with the usual absence of result. 

Barbour Sevens moistened his lips and over his 
confused mind settled a cramp of inaction. He 
could realize fully only one thing: that he had come 
here with thieves, that a murder had been committed, 


132 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


133 


and that with the dead man he had publicly quar¬ 
relled. Only two people, one of whom was now eter¬ 
nally silenced, could ever have spoken the word that 
would disprove his guilt. 

Instinct warned him that his one present safety 
lay in sealed lips, until Mandelle had arrived to 
counsel him, and yet silence seemed also to deepen 
his seeming of complicity. He could feel the anger of 
the crowd lowering over him, none of whose members 
knew his name or anything about him, beyond his 
deleterious seeming, and he caught the suppressed 
wrath with which the officer enjoined, “Well, speak 
up, can’t you? Or maybe you’d rather tell it at the 
station house.” 

He was still panting from his recent exertion and 
while he tried confusedly to think he fumbled at his 
collar with the clawing gesture of one seeking to 
recover breath and voice, but that only gained him a 
moment of respite. 

Then he heard another voice, and in the pause that 
followed its first words he felt the sudden tenseness 
of a listening silence through which drifted the grind 
of the elevated a half block away and the drone of 
Sixth Avenue’s traffic. 

“Let me tell it first,” volunteered the voice. “I’m 
the night watchman.” 

The officer turned his glance willingly. 

“Snap into it then,” he enjoined. “Who’s the 
dead man and who killed him—this fella here? ” 


134 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“No—the dead man’s Mr. Shell, president and 
general manager of Beverly Brothers . . . and 

the other gentleman’s Mr. Sevens, his assistant. He 
was knocked out, too, by the burglars. ” 

There was an out-breathing from the crowd, almost 
a disappointment as if the drama of the situation 
had been punctured. 

As though a keen edge had snapped a tight cord. 
Sevens felt the coils of the crowd psychology loosen 
out of that hostile suspicion for himself which had 
seemed to strangle him. Until then he had been 
conscious of faces peering at him with the morbid 
interest which focuses upon a murderer. Now he 
blessedly sunk out of that prime interest to the lesser 
part of a fellow victim. 

“Mr. Shell came in here alone to-night,” went on 
the watchman steadily. “He told me that on ac¬ 
count of all these robberies, he wanted to make 
sure that us watchmen were right up on our toes. 
He brought me a new gun—that’s it layin’ there on 
his desk. He said Mr. Sevens was inspecting the 
other houses. I s’pose Mr. Sevens came here to 
meet him—and ran spang into the robbers.” 

“Where was you when the racket began?” de¬ 
manded the officer, and the watchman answered 
slowly: 

“I was settin’ back in the rear playin’ Canfield. 
I heard a shot to’rds the front and I started forward, 
then I heard another right on top of the first. That 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


135 


rear wareroom’s crowded, and in the dark I stumbled 
over something and fell down. I heard what sounded 
like two or three men rushing out of the room ahead 
of me. ” 

He paused and wiped the face upon which the 
sweat was still stealing out. 

‘‘Yes, go on,” urged the policeman. 

“I still had my own gun and, when I got to the 
hall, I could make out that men were running through 
it and I shot down the corridor—but they got away 
I could still hear noises like a fight goin’ 
on here in the office and I rushed for it, but at the door 
somebody knocked into me and bowled me over 
against the wall. He got away, too.” 

The narrator paused and drew a long breath, then 
he concluded his recital: 

“When I come in here things was just like you 
found ’em except that Mr. Sevens was pickin' him¬ 
self up off the floor like as if he’d been knocked out 
. He’d been roughin’ it with that last fella 
that got away . . . the same fella that must of 

shot Mr. Shell.” 

To Sevens the breathing spell afforded by the night 
watchman’s narrative came like a new lease on life. 
His mind had cleared to conclusion and the spirit of 
the crowd’s conviction no longer fettered him with 
helplessness. He must say as much as seemed 
needful and as little as possible, until he had conferred 
with the only other living being who knew the whole 


136 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


truth. As the eyes of Officer Mahaffey turned to¬ 
ward him he nodded his head. 

“I can talk now,” he said, taking up the testimony 
of his subordinate. “I was out of breath at first.” 
He lifted his overcoat where a bullet had torn it. 
“The thief was shooting at me—when he hit Mr. 
Shell, ” he added. “ I clinched with him. ” 

A new and kindlier note had come into the patrol¬ 
man’s voice. 

“Take your time,” he counselled. “I reckon 
you’re about all in. When I seen you settin’ there 
at first I took you for one of the guns. ” 

The situation had changed. Sevens knew that he 
could afford to be conservatively brief. 

“There isn’t much I can add,” he answered. “I 
found the front door open and I was surprised at that. 
I hurried in and saw Mr. Shell sitting at the desk, 
then I felt a gun poked against my ribs from behind 
and I called out and dodged ... I grappled with 
the man that had the gun and we fought . 

He shot twice. It wasn’t until the gunman broke 
away that I saw Mr. Shell had been shot ... I 
was pretty busy myself.” 

“I’ll bet you was, and lucky to be alive, at that,” 
agreed the officer. “So you just run into it, like 
steppin’ on a snake?” 

Sevens inclined his head. 

“Description of the man,” commanded the offi¬ 


cer. 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


137 


I 

“ Red-haired—average height—well dressed. About 
my own weight, I should guess,” summarized Sevens. 

“ Features?” 

“ Can’t say very definitely. It was all going too 
quickly to see much.” 

“ Must have been, ” the policeman growled, though 
with a sympathetic rumble in his voice. “Snap 
into it, boys. Get the coroner’s officer. Take the 
names of all these people . . . Stay where you 

are, everybody, until we get names and addresses 
Call a taxi for Mr. Sevens . . I 

shouldn’t wonder if he needs to get home and rest up 
Maybe to have a doctor give him the 
once-over. ” 

But at that suggestion Sevens shook his head. 

“I’ll wait for the coroner’s officer,” he said; then 
added thoughtfully, “Mr. Shell and I were talking 
to an attorney this afternoon about taking pre¬ 
cautions against just such a robbery as this. I’d 
like to have that attorney come here, if I can get him 
. and see things as they are. ’ 

Within an hour the crowd, which had pressed mor¬ 
bidly about so long as the body remained where it 
had fallen, thinned away, and Sevens sat alone with 
Mandelle. Mr. Mandelle had been at his apartment 
that evening and when the telephone summons 
reached him there he did not seem so amazed as 
might have been reasonably expected. Now he sat 
listening to the story of Barbour Sevens with a face 


138 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


that grew graver with each sentence and it was a 
gravity not wholly induced by the predicament of his 
present companion. 

The death of Tom Shell had put upon the face of 
affairs a new, unpremeditated, and highly disquieting 
expression, and to this altered expression Joe Man- 
delle was painfully alert. He had responded to the 
first and unexpected summons from Beverly Brothers 
because he had not known how to refuse and because 
he had reasonably hoped that he might enrich his 
store of valuable information. He had learned to 
his surprise that the “inside man” whom he had 
himself recommended to his criminal associates had 
welched on them and at the same time he had been 
drafted into the position of corroborating witness to 
the innocent motive with which Sevens was entering 
upon an apparent crime. At the time of being 
forced by circumstances into so dual a role he had 
construed it to mean only that the effort to rob 
Beverly Brothers must be abandoned and the con¬ 
spirators warned. His great idea had merely col¬ 
lapsed and he had supposed that the matter would end 
there. Now the conspirators had gone ahead and mur¬ 
der had been the outcome. Joe Mandelle realized 
that he had overreached himself. He was advisor 
to both sides of an issue that involved life and death, 
and the side he dared not acknowledge was also the 
side he dared not abandon. He was in an awkward, 
a mischievously and deplorably awkward predica- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


139 


ment, and almost at once Mandelle saw the single 
plausible solution. Things must be so handled and 
jockeyed that Barbour Sevens would not by any 
chance become a defendant or need an advocate 
before a jury. It was one thing to mislead and 
deleteriously advise a man who was out of court, 
but it was quite another thing to betray a client 
when one stood as his attorney of record. 

As for truly representing Sevens in good faith, 
that was out of any question. Mandelle knew the 
wolf pack with which he had been surreptitiously, 
though profitably, running. He dared not turn on 
them, and least of all just now, when he must seem 
to their directing spirit to have projected them into 
this malodorous mess. 

But these were all thoughts that marched and 
countermarched back of a countenance discreetly 
grave and sympathetically attentive, while Barbour 

talked. 

When the conclusion of that narrative was reached, 
Mandelle rose and paced the floor. As keenly and 
mercilessly as though he had been, in actuality, a 
prosecutor, he cross-questioned his man. This 
was proper enough. No attorney is capable of 
advising until he can see the case in the worst aspect 
it may assume to the opposition, and when this in¬ 
quisition was over, IMandelle lcncw step by step all 
that had happened that evening. 

“Why did you fall into the trap, when the gun- 


140 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


man pretended to know that you’d double-crossed?” 
he demanded sharply, and Sevens answered shame¬ 
facedly, because he felt that a weak point in his 
conduct had been touched. 

“He said I had, and I knew I had, and it didn’t 
occur to me, at the moment, to deny it.” 

“How could he have known any such thing,” 
questioned Mandelle, “unless Shell or you or I had 
given away the secret?” 

“I don’t suppose he could have known,” admitted 
Sevens. 

“Don’t you see that the fellow was bluffing; that 
they simply meant to take that ground as an excuse 
for doing you out of your promised share?” 

“I see it now and I saw it soon after it was spoken 
of,” came the slow response. “But I didn’t see it 
in time to save myself from falling into the trap. ” 

“Don’t you also see,” went on the lawyer, even 
more insistently, “that the intent from the first was 
to put through this robbery to-night?” 

Sevens gazed at the other out of surprise-widened 
eyes. 

“Why?” 

“Because otherwise the whole plan might have 
fallen of its own weight. It contemplated your get¬ 
ting rid of a night watchman, and had you been given 
a day’s interval to coach and warn him they wouldn’t 
have dared to risk his bringing help.” 

Sevens nodded his head in the bleak and belated 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


141 


realization of his folly. 4 4 That occurred to me hazily 
when the first man and I got into the cab together,” 
he confessed, 44 but I saw in it only a problem to reason 
out later. It all seemed a future thing, you see, and 
I assumed they were trusting me in some respects.” 

Joe Mandelle lighted a cigar and for a few minutes 
tramped the floor with his hands pocketed and his 
brow deeply furrowed. 

At last he halted squarely before Sevens and spoke 
in a voice of final judgment. 

“There’s only one safe course to take, old man,” 
he asserted. “Tell nothing more than you have 
already told. Confine yourself to that at the inquest. 
Keep absolutely mum about your effort to trap these 
fellows or about ever having seen any of them be¬ 
fore.” 

Sevens narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like that,” 
he said quickly. “I don’t begin to like it! Sup¬ 
pressing any part of my evidence would come pretty 
close to being perjury, wouldn’t it?” 

“If it comes to that, ” retorted the attorney crisply, 
44 1 don’t like any of the situation. Tell what you 
have so far told. That is all strictly true and it in 
no way involves you. Volunteer nothing more.” 

Barbour’s face paled and he barked out on a note 
of panic: 44 Suppose that infernal memorandum that 
I signed came to light . . It would seem a 

confession ... It would be a confession!” 

44 Shell destroyed that, didn’t he?” 


142 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“He promised to—but in the hurry of the day I 
forgot to find out for certain. ” 

“Let us assume,” suggested the lawyer reassur¬ 
ingly, “that he kept his word . Let us assume 

it with the precaution of a thorough search ... I 
suppose you have access to his desk? ” 

“Yes. But isn’t it better to state the whole truth 
first off? You can corroborate me. That’s why we 
sent for you in the first place.” 

The lawyer leaned forward and laid an urgent 
hand on the other’s elbow. 

“For just that reason,” he declared earnestly, “I 
want you to manage this so that you won’t need any 
lawyer. So that you won’t ever appear as a defend¬ 
ant.” 

“Would telling the whole truth make me a 
defendant?” 

“As sure as God reigns in heaven, it will.” Man- 
delle paused, then went on. “Listen to me patiently 
for a few moments. The admirable theory of ad¬ 
ministering justice is that the law seeks to punish 
only the guilty. I’m a lawyer and I know the vari¬ 
ances as well as the theories of practice. Here is a 
murder case with which the press will ring, and the 
District Attorney’s office must needs make a showing. 
It dare not fail to produce and punish—someone. 
First of all, it must have a defendant to prosecute and 
so far it has none. Suppose you say that you had 
entered into a conspiracy with these men, but that 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


143 


Shell urged you to do it. Shell cannot corroborate 
you. I am qualified to do that but I can and will be 
contradicted. They will accept just so much of 
your statement at the D. A.’s office as incriminates 
you and repudiate the rest—because you’re at hand 
and in effect you’ll have asked for it. Really guilty 
men will be quick to offer themselves as State’s evi¬ 
dence to build the case against you and purchase 
their own immunity. You quarrelled with Sheik 
You seemed to yield to seductive offers to betray and 
rob him with the twin motives of cupidity and ven¬ 
geance. The newspapers, once your name has been 
placed in nomination as the master-mind, won’t re¬ 
linquish you, because a fallen angel is worth columns 
of news where a chronic yegg is worth a stick. That 
case will develop and build itself—if you start it. 
If you keep your mouth shut it can’t rise from any 
other source.” 

“Why not?” demanded Sevens in tense-toned 
apprehension and reply followed instantly on the 
question. 

“No one else can possibly raise it because only the 
crooks know it and the crooks would be the last to 
come forward. Even if they are caught and put on 
trial, there’s no element of defense for them in im¬ 
plicating you. You stand presumptively as a man 
who was in the fight against these crooks. Don’t com¬ 
plicate matters by volunteering that, for whatever 
reason, you had traffic with them before the fact.” 


144 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“I’ve called on you for counsel,” said Sevens slow¬ 
ly, “and I’ve got to abide by it, I suppose 
but I don’t like it. I don’t like it a little bit! Even 
if it works as you say now, it can’t always remain a 
secret. When they bring somebody to trial, I’ll 
have to take the stand—and I can’t lie then under 
cross-examination. ” 

“True enough,” concurred Mandelle. “And I 
should certainly not advise you to withhold anything 
that’s relevant on the stand, at the trial of a defendant 
other than yourself. But by that time the prosecution 
will have its target in the culprit it is trying, and 
your place will be fixed as an important dependence 
of the commonwealth. Then the D. A. will be bent on 
sustaining and justifying you—but now, with no other 
being standing accused, he would assign you quite 
a different role—the role of the readiest scapegoat. ” 

“And at the inquest?” 

“At the inquest it will occur to no one to press you 
with questions that will embarrass you. What you 
have already said is about all they will expect you to 
say. Meanwhile, it’s my most unqualified judgment 
that you must maintain a discreet silence. Did 
you succeed in identifying any one?” 

Sevens shook his head. “No,” he said. “I 
couldn’t do much in that line.” 

“Then merely sit pretty and remember that, at 
need, I’m here to state the facts and assume full 
responsibility for my advice to you.” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


145 


“For God’s sake,” broke out Sevens nervously, 
“don’t let an untimely death overtake you, too.” 

“That catastrophe,” acceded the attorney with a 
smile, “I shall, for more reasons than one, seek to 
avoid.” 

Barbour Sevens looked fixedly at the man who had 
crossed his path so unexpectedly after their courses 
had run untouching for these intervening years, and 
the appraisal inspired confidence. An alert light 
quickened in the attorney’s eyes and a vigorous self> 
faith gave boldness to his face. He was obviously 
gifted with intelligence and energy and there was no 
reason to doubt that he knew the law. 

“ One thing more occurs to me, ” observed Mandelle 
meditatively. “Beverly Brothers was more or less 
a one-man power. Its autocrat has suddenly passed 
out. Who will step into his shoes? Are you the 
logical successor?” 

Moodily Barbour shook his head. 

“Shell saw to it that I always appeared a subordi¬ 
nate. The company is incorporated and the directors 
will have to act. They took Shell at his own valua¬ 
tion and I suppose they know of me only what Shell 
told them.” 

•tjr 

The attorney nodded. “That’s just as well for 
the immediate present,” he gave encouraging as¬ 
surance. “Because I want you to go away for a 
while, and if you seemed too indispensable that might 
be hard to manage. ” 


146 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“Go away?” 

“Yes. Your wife has to go South for her cure. 
It’s logical that you should want to make the trip 
with her and see her comfortably established. ” 

“I had expected to—before this happened,” an¬ 
swered Barbour slowly. “Her sister was to be with 
her after I came back. I didn’t want her alone—and 
Faith has a slender income of her own.” 

“Then insist on being allowed to carry out your 
plan. You’ve earned a short leave of absence and 
you must have it as soon as you’ve called the directors 
together and stated to them such facts as we’ve 
agreed you are to state at all.” 

“It seems a strange time to demand a vacation,” 
demurred Barbour, but the other shook an im¬ 
patient head. 

“Quite the contrary. The directors will want to 
take prompt steps toward running down and punish¬ 
ing this outrage. You must realize that. They’ll have 
to employ detectives and lawyers and in all likelihood 
offer a reward. Under the circumstance, that work 
ought to be in other hands than yours. How could 
you at once direct the pursuit and keep discreetly 
silent?” 

The logic of that seemed irrefutable and as Sevens 
silently acknowledged the point, Mandelle went on: 

“Shell and you were the only persons who knew 
that I was previously talked with as a lawyer. Now 
I had better stand clear of all phases of the case 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


147 


except your interests. If I’m ever needed to speak 
for you I can then come in unprejudiced before the 
jury. Let the directors take over the prosecution, 
but before they meet you and I must assure ourselves 
of the destruction of that memorandum which Shell 
promised to destroy.” 

Again Sevens nodded. 

“And now,” ordered the attorney, “go home and 
try to get some rest. You need it.” 


CHAPTER XII 


I T WAS well past midnight when Barbour let him¬ 
self into his apartment, and because he had an¬ 
nounced that he would probably be late, both 
Hope and Faith were sleeping without anxiety. He 
himself sat for a long while in the small living room 
with hot-eyed wakefulness and unrelaxing nerves, 
and though sleep stood far off, nightmare thoughts 
pressed close and savage about him. The doctor 
had said that upon rest, nourishment, and the avoid¬ 
ance of worry depended his wife’s hope of recovery. 
Undoubtedly Mandelle’s advice had been sound, at 
least so far as it affected her. It would have been 
devastating to her to see him standing in so ambigu¬ 
ous a position as the lawyer had forecast in the event 
of his admitting a participation which was actually 
so blameless and seemingly so damnable. It might 
even have killed her, had he been, just now, seized 
upon as a sacrifice victim to an indignant public 
clamour for revenge—upon someone. 

He himself could not hope to avoid a depleting 
torture of worry until he could be sure that Shell 
had destroyed the memorandum which was as com¬ 
plete a confession as the law would need, or until 

148 



ALIAS RED RYAN * 149 

he had possessed himself of it and destroyed it him¬ 
self. 

The sheer idiocy of ever having typed and signed 
such a thing came over him now with a deluge of 
bitter self-contempt. It had been so needless, and 
yet it had appealed to him as so swift and sure a 
way of dispelling from the mind of the other the 
confused suspicions that were cumbering a prompt 
understanding. It had seemed a dramatic gesture— 
and he had made it. The purpose had been fully 
served—and then the unexpected train of after¬ 
effects had developed. 

Through the troubled interminability of the night 
he sat in his chair in the darkened room, and if he 
slept at all it was only to dream that he was fretfully 
awake. In the hours just ahead of dawn, when the 
restless voices of the city dwindled into brief half¬ 
tones of semi-silence, a sort of exhausted coma 
engulfed him, but only to be broken with a wrench¬ 
ing start at the first rumblings of milk trucks in the 
street below. 

With sunken eyes, he told the story of Shell’s death 
to Hope, but by some merciful illogic she appeared to 
seize upon the realization of his own escape and 
thanksgiving for it, almost to the exclusion of horror 
and the shock of horror. Aside from its averted 
menace to himself the tragedy seemed, to her, remote 
and unreal. 

He was scrupulously prompt in his arrival at the 



150 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Fifth Avenue establishment of Beverly Brothers, yet 
a stenographer, pale with the shocked excitement of 
the news she had been reading, told him that someone 
else was already waiting for him in the inner offices. 

“Mr. Mandelle,” said the young woman, “came 
ten minutes ago. He said he had been with you last 
night—after it happened—and had an appointment 
to meet you here. He's in your office now. ” 

A sigh of relief and satisfaction broke from the 
lips of Barbour Sevens. He found himself leaning 
heavily on the judgment of the man he had known 
in freshman days, and he nodded as he passed hastily 
through his own door and closed it after him. 

His office and that of Tom Shell were communi¬ 
cating rooms cut off from the outer spaces, and as 
Sevens came in Mandelle stood on the threshold 
between the two. 

The attorney had arrived before the Fifth Avenue 
doors of the establishment had opened that morning 
and he had gone, with the earliest arrivals of the 
employee force, through the sales-rooms and up to 
the administration floor. He had been there yester¬ 
day as a lawyer at the invitation of the chief who was 
now dead, and it occurred to no one to question his 
confident assumption that all doors were open to him 
this morning. The margin of time which he had 
spent alone in Tom Shell’s mahogany-panelled sanc¬ 
tum had been brief, but he had neither expected nor 
needed it to be long. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


151 


He was following an intuitive impulse just now. 
If Shell had not destroyed the memorandum which 
was causing Sevens such a torture of anxiety, the 
only assignable cause of such delinquency must have 
been an accident of oversight—and if such oversight 
had occurred, the thing might be still lying on the 
desk, forgotten. 

Alone in the twin offices, he had gone straight to 
the flat-topped table with its trays of correspondence 
and its incidental furnishings—and there, anchored 
by the cut-glass ink-well, he had caught sight of the 
scrap of paper which he had scarcely hoped to find. 
Greedily, Mandelle glanced through it, with a gaze 
that identified typed paragraphs and pen-written 
acknowledgment. For an instant only, after that, he 
hesitated, then his eyes quickened with avid pleasure. 

The first sentence was all preamble: all of minor 
consequence and, watchful that the right-hand edge 
of the page, bearing the date, remained intact, he tore 
a sizeable scrap from its upper left-hand corner and 
thrust the rest of the refolded paper into his breast 
pocket. 

The waste-basket stood over against the wall 
beside the desk and swiftly Mandelle tore the scrap 
of sheet that he had detached into three or four 
smaller fragments which he thrust between the desk 
and the wall at its back. 

Then he turned and waited. 

Now as Sevens entered, with ringed eyes and an 


152 ALIAS RED RYAN 

anxiety-drawn face, Mandelle accosted him reas¬ 
suringly. 

“Let’s get this search under way,” he said. “I’ve 
already glanced about in cursory fashion, but natur¬ 
ally I waited for you before really starting. ” 

“I have the keys to the desk,” Sevens told him, 
almost breathlessly, “ but we’d better search the top 
and letter racks first.” 

The attorney nodded, and stood meditatively 
looking over the shoulder of the other as he ransacked 
the letter-tray, lifted the blotter, and exhaustively 
inspected the limited area with fingers that were un¬ 
steady. 

Then, in turn, the drawers were opened and rum¬ 
maged to their bottoms, and after that procedure, 
came to its vain end, Barbour straightened up and his 
face was chalk white. 

“We don’t—” he began and broke off to moisten 
his lips—“we don’t seem to find it!” 

“After all, the presumption is that he destroyed it, 
you know, ” the other reminded him reassuringly, but 
Sevens shook his head in a bleak and dogged despair. 

“It’s the suspense,” he declared in a dry-throated 
voice. “Don’t you realize the wretchedness—of 
never knowing?” 

“Buck up. Barb,” urged his companion. “I, 
above all else, realize the danger of growing panicky. 
Let’s reason it out. If Shell destroyed this thing he 
must have thrown the pieces into the waste-basket 


ALIAS RED RYAN 153 

that’s premise number one. Where is 
the basket emptied? ” 

“The place is cleaned at night,” Shell’s assistant 
told him. “I don’t know what the janitors do with the 
sweepings . . . What would they do with them?” 

“In some fashion the waste stuff is destroyed; 
you may be sure of that. You might get hold of the 
janitor, but I dare say that wouldn’t help much.” 

“He works at night,” replied the other despond¬ 
ently. “I don’t know where he is now. It would 
take some time to locate him.” 

“Let’s search further for ourselves, then,” suggested 
the attorney. “Some scraps may have fallen some¬ 
where and escaped the janitor’s eye . . . That’s 

not likely though, is it?” 

“It’s worth a try. Anything is better than inac¬ 
tivity. Here, lend me a hand,” begged Sevens almost 
wildly. “Let’s move out the desk and look behind 
it—and underneath. Then there’s the file-case.” 

Smiling indulgently, as though he were humouring 
a fretful child, Mandelle took one end of the desk 
and the two men hefted its massive bulk aside. Then 
with a stifled exclamation that was almost an out¬ 
cry of relief Sevens was down on his hands and knees 
retrieving several small patches of ragged paper 
from the floor and cobwebbed wall. 

Now his hand shook with a palsy that defeated his 
effort to handle the small patches of puzzle scraps, 
and it was Mandelle who pieced them deftly together 


154 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


on the blotter, matching their edges into a whole, 
until certain words became legible. 

Barbour Sevens straightened up slowly. A cold 
sweat stood out on his temples but a long breath ran 
between his lips as his tautness relaxed into unutter¬ 
able relief, and his eyes were like those to which cool 
sanity returns after delirium. 

“That’s it, ” he exclaimed. “ That’s part of it, any¬ 
way! He did tear it up as he promised.” 

“Yes,” the other agreed, “Shell undoubtedly tore 
the thing to tatters and tossed it into the basket. 
These scraps fell wild.” 

“Thank God,” murmered Barbour fervently. “I 
was going to pieces, wasn’t I? ” 

“Naturally enough, you were excited,” the lawyer 
assured him. “But now you can meet the directors 
with an easy mind.” He clapped a hand on the 
other’s shoulder. “I congratulate you on the out¬ 
come of our search.” 

Sevens dropped limply into a chair. 

“Yes,” he answered, pressing a hand to his burn¬ 
ing eyes. “I can meet them now, all right.” 

Suddenly he came to his feet again. 

“I’m not usually so hysterical, Joe,” he declared 
with self-scorn. “I’ve been wondering what all this 
would do to Hope if things went wrong.” 

“And I don’t blame you,” answered Mandelle. 
“You’d have to be a cold proposition to feel other¬ 


wise. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


155 


Before the morning had spent itself half way to 
noon, the men who controlled the affairs of the fur 
company sat in a grim-faced conclave about the long 
table in the conference room, and Sevens sat with 
them outwardly self-contained and imperturbable. 

“If the thieves had gotten away with their whole 
plan,” fumed Jason Hub well, to whom the directors’ 
table was an accustomed place, “we could better 
have taken our loss. They didn’t get the whole of 
their intended loot, but they got Tom Shell. We 
must make an example of these murderers.” 

“A laudable and unanimous sentiment. But we 
need to get them first, ” cut in John Richland drily. 

“The Turner Detective Agency would seem our 
best bet now. Let’s get Turner here and start to 
work. I wouldn’t give a whistle down the wind for 
the city forces.” 

Sevens had already made his brief and admirably 
modest statement, and there had been no disposition 
to catechize him on any point he had not volunteered. 
On the contrary, he found himself deferred to as some¬ 
thing of a hero, but he waited for the arrival of the 
celebrated detective with the apprehension of post¬ 
poned ordeal. When, at length, the door opened on 
a full-bodied man whose portrait he had seen in maga¬ 
zines and newspapers, he braced himself for in¬ 
quisition. But again he found no spirit of question¬ 
ing his own status as one of secure trust. Those 
questions which the investigator put to him, though 


156 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


pointed and clean-cut, were neither hard nor em¬ 
barrassing questions to answer. 

“Now, gentlemen,” announced Turner, when the 
talk had run its course, “it’s due to a miracle of good 
luck, and his own ability as a husky scrapper, that 
Mr. Sevens didn’t go the same way as Mr. Shell . . . 
I believe the whole bunch went in that open door not 
far ahead of Mr. Sevens and that the fellow who 
followed him into the office and covered him was 
standing in the dark and flat against the wall as he 
passed by.” He paused, then added, “I’m going 
to call in, as an associate in this case, a man that 
isn’t connected with my staff. Unless you press me 
I’d rather not go into detail as to who that man will 
be or how I’m going to use him, except to say that he’s 
a "go-getter.’ All we’ve got to go on so far is that 
Mr. Sevens here saw that the murderer had a red 
head, and out of six million people—well, we’ll do 
the best we can. ” 

He had gone out and the board stood on the point 
of adjournment when Sevens, somewhat hesitantly, 
broached his request for permission to accompany his 
wife South and he was surprised at the readiness with 
which it was granted. 

“ When you’ve helped the detectives to get started, 
I think you’re entitled to a breathing spell,” an¬ 
nounced Richland, and Hubwell seconded the pro¬ 
posal with cordial heartiness. 



CHAPTER XIII 


I N THE so-called roaring Forties and, of course, 
within a stone’s throw of Broadway, stands a 
cafe which was once famous when the white- 
jacketed men behind its long bar were kept strenu¬ 
ously busy from late afternoon to the verge of dawn. 
Someone esoterically versed in underworld intrica¬ 
cies had said, on one occasion, “It’s at Tony’s place 
that the word’s passed to cut loose or lay low.” 
This comment had been made a good while ago, but 
even in those palmy days the casual tourist and the 
respectable Broadwayite had patronized Tony’s with¬ 
out anxiety, knowing that if it was a hangout for 
thieves, they were such thieves as could pass optical 
muster and mix discreetly with men outside their 
own guild. In short, Tony’s conformed to modernity. 
Its fittings were elegant enough, its food good enough, 
and its policy conservative enough to warrant its 
standing where it stood. Even now there was the 
glamour of a certain adventure about the place. One 
could usually find about its door, or inside its lounge, 
faces and figures that had a distinctive if not dis¬ 
tinguished character of their own. Here one saw 
close-shaven cheeks, bleached by unremitting avoid- 

157 


158 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ance of manual labour, and hands with meticulously 
manicured nails proclaiming disdain of toilsome cal¬ 
louses. Here underworld characters of high localized 
repute, who might or might not make occasional 
forays across the border of the law’s surveying, met as 
more conventional gentlemen foregathered at their 
clubs. There they blandly passed the time of day 
with policemen and detectives, who strolled in to 
glance about out of eyes seemingly negligent but 
actually alert and hopeful. In short, over Tony’s 
place lay a spirit of armed and mobilized neutrality— 
and there much was told and much withheld. Men 
with some countersign or free-masonary of crime 
passed on information meant for no other ears, and 
others whose earnest desire was to penetrate these 
secrets encountered here the reticent spirit of a sphinx. 

Into Tony’s, on the afternoon after the death of 
Tom Shell, came Don Fogarty, and he might with 
equal appropriateness have belonged to any one of the 
three parts into which, like all Gaul, Tony’s patron¬ 
age was divided. He might have been one of those 
whose care it was to tread in light caution, for none 
of the rat-keen eyes that ever darted about the place 
held a shrewder or quicker light than his. Again 
he might have belonged to the sort that dropped 
in, silently watchful, seeking information and min¬ 
gling in a false affability with crooks whose silence 
they sought to penetrate. Then, too, he might have 
been the casual patron who neither hunts nor hides 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


159 


in that sporadic war that wages between the law and 
its breakers. This indeed seemed more probable, for 
he looked the keen young business man more con- 
vincingly than either law-breaker or sleuth. 

It was that time which was once called the “cock¬ 
tail hour” along Broadway when Fogarty entered 
Tony’s and bought a cigar. He stood at the counter 
only a minute or two and then, with a glance at his 
watch, turned again toward the street door. 

He was a compactly but slenderly built young man 
of medium stature, who moved with the bird-like 
quickness of a ready energy and a wiry muscularity. 

His face was chiselled out in lines and angles, 
accentuated by leanness, and it was a face of rather 
pleasing homeliness, vigorous in its wakefulness of 
expression. 

His hair was sandy but of the sort that fades 
prematurely into gray, and already, in spite of evi¬ 
dent youth, it was rusting to an iron tone about the 
temples and neck. 

The visitor, with his cigar kindled, went out, 
and at the door he nodded his greeting to a youngish 
man whose face was unhealthily bloodless. This one 
scarcely seemed to see him, but in a few moments he, 
too, passed out and a block farther north and a half 
block farther east, he came alongside and dropped 
into step. 

“I want to talk to you,” he asserted bluntly. “I 
want to spill an earful.” 


160 ALIAS RED RYAN 

Fogarty lifted inquiring brows and haled a passing 
taxi. 

As he stepped in, without further invitation the 
man of the pasty complexion followed him, and 
leaning back against the cushions sat for a time look¬ 
ing moodily ahead. 

“What’s on your mind, Max?” inquired Fogarty 
at last, and the other turned his beady eyes and 
answered in churlish fashion. 

“The bulls picked Lou Stine up this morning— 
and they’re fixin’ to frame him. All the old stuff, 
see? Planted a gat on him and took him down to 
headquarters for a bully-ragging, see?” 

“How come?” demanded Fogarty briefly. “ Have 
they got something on this lad, or is it a fishing 
expedition?” 

“If you ask me, it’s because he’s red-headed.” 

“Red-headed? That interests me. If I’m not 
red-headed myself, at least I’m a sort of pale pink. ” 

“Now get me straight, see? All that this man 
Sevens could spill to the cops about the Beverly job 
was that the guy that bumped off Tom Shell had 
red hair, an’ the bulls are makin’ their usual bone¬ 
headed play at roundin’ up suspects.” 

“Did Lou bump off Tom Shell?” 

The rat-eyed man laughed scornfully. 

“Bump off Tom Shell! Say, Lou ain’t no gun. 
He’s a cheap little yegg. The furthest he goes is 
sneak work on the ground floor—but he’s done a 


ALIAS RED RYAN 161 

stretch an 5 that’s all the cops needs. A guy with a 
prison record ain’t got no come-back, see?” 

“A previous conviction, eh? Has he got a mouth¬ 
piece?” 

“No. He had a lawyer—name of Mandelle— 
when they sent him up for grand, but to-day he rang 
Mandelle up from the station house and the bird 
turned him down cold. Said he was too busy.” 

“Why do you tell me all this, Max?” inquired 
Fogarty quietly. “ What have I got to do with it? ” 

“Just this,” retorted the other quickly. “You’ve 
got a good bean under your lid—and you’ve been 
thumb-tracked and strong-armed by the cops often 
enough to know the game that Lou’s up against.” 
He paused, then added: “Besides that, I’ve passed 
a tip or two your way in times gone by, and I don’t 
mind asking a favour of you.” 

“Hasn’t Lou any friends?” 

The other paused for a moment, then answered sul¬ 
lenly, “None that wants to come forward just now. ” 

“Oh,” said Fogarty. 

“It’s like this. It’s a frame. Lou’s a crook. 
Nobody ain’t denying that—but he ain’t done nothin’ 
this trip and there ain’t no reason why he should 
have to go up the river. ” 

“Just what do you want me to do?” 

“I want you to go down there and talk to him.” 

After a moment Fogarty nodded. “I’ll go,” he 
said. 



162 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Whatever were his relations to the underworld, 
Don Fogarty knew the ropes. Though it was true, as 
Max had intimated, that he had himself experienced 
police harrying, his record at the moment imposed 
upon him no fear in the matter of going to the Tombs 
and, having presented himself there, he found him¬ 
self permitted to talk in brief confidence with Lou 
Stine. 

“Give him good advice, Don,” was the affable 
suggestion of the official who admitted him. “May¬ 
be he’ll take it from you. Slip him the tip that if he’s 
disposed to talk out straight, it may go easier with 
him in the long run. We think he knows something 
about fur. ” 

“The boys uptown claim this is a frame,” replied 
Fogarty quietly. “ If it looks that way to me, I won’t 
advise him to fall for it, but if I think he’s stalling. 
I’ll follow your line. I only came because he doesn’t 
seem to have many friends rallying around this 
morning. ” 

Inside the cage-like room, where visitors and pris¬ 
oners met, Fogarty found a sullen captive leaning 
toward morose silence, but after a little his mood 
melted into a greater spirit of communicativeness. 

“The bulls planted a gat in my clothes and hauled 
me in,” he complained, “and I don’t own no gat. 
They’re just making a blind stab in the hope that if 
they put the screws to me hard enough I might 
snitch on some other guy worth pulling in. It’s the 


ALIAS RED RYAN 163 

fur business that’s bitin’ ’em, and that’s why this 
bird Mandelle won’t defend me.” 

“I’m not so sure that I get you, Lou. Why 
won’t Mandelle take a case because the cops claim 
it’s connected with a fur robbery? ” 

A flash of gusty wrath shot into the prisoner’s 
shifty eyes. 

“You come here as a friend of mine,” he said, 
“and I’m talking to you straight. I don’t know 
nothin’ more about this part of it than what you do, 
and so I ain’t makin’ no wise cracks. I’m just 
guessin’ myself. I ain’t no fur thief. I wish I was. 
Them guys has been pickin’ the berries, and it looks 
to me like they’ve got protection.” 

He paused, and Fogarty refrained from hurrying 
him. At length Stine went morosely on: 

“All I knows is what I reads in the papers—but the 
bean can work out a guess or two. When these 
guns stuck up Slapinsky’s house a few nights back, 
who was the guy that just happened to run in and 
get a gat poked in his ribs? Who was the guy that 
told the police he’d beat it up to the place before 
he thought about the chance of gettin’ croaked? 
The papers says it was this same Joe Mandelle.” 

Fogarty nodded. 

“Mandelle was one of the crowd attracted by the 
burglar alarm, according to the papers,” he acceded. 
“But what of that?” 

“Yeah, what of it, I ask you? What was Joe 


164 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Mandelle doin’ strollin’ round loose in that part of 
town just then? There ain’t supposed to be much 
goin’ on there at that time of night.” 

“What were any of them doing there just then?” 

“The rest of ’em gave home addresses in the neigh¬ 
bourhood. They was on their own beat, but Man¬ 
delle he wasn’t.” 

Fogarty shook his head dubiously. 

“That’s wild guessing, Lou,” he said. “But why 
do you want Mandelle especially? Why not some 
other mouth-piece?” 

“I knows him, that’s all, an' I knows he’s a sharp 
rat in court. But besides that, it makes me sore to 
have him turn me down cold when I’m an old-time 
customer of his. ” 

“I’ll see him, if you like. ” 

“All right.” It was a churlish acceptance of a 
kindness, but Lou Stine was graceless by nature, not 
by design. “See him an’ slip him this message from 
me. Shoot it to him straight. I’m just takin’ a 
chance shot—see?—but I’ve got a hunch. Tell 
him that maybe I’m wise to certain things that ain’t 
generally known, an’ maybe if friends don’t come 
rompin’ through, with a defense fund, I’ll spill them 
same things to the bulls. Tell him that an’ see if 
it means anything in his life.” 

Don Fogarty obligingly carried his message as 
envoy from the jailed suspect, but he found Mandelle 
urbanely obdurate. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


165 


“Your friend is barking up the wrong tree, Mr. 
Fogarty,” said the attorney equably. “I repre¬ 
sented him once before and I’d be glad to do it 
again—except for the prosaic fact that I’m too busy. 
This case will be called for an early hearing and I 
have to leave town within a few days.” 

“I don’t know what Stine had in mind,” suggested 
the visitor carelessly. “But as I left, he asked me 
to deliver one message as nearly verbatim as I could. 
‘Tell him that maybe I know some things an’ maybe 
if friends don’t come through with defense money. 
I’ll spill my information to the bulls.’” 

Mandelle lifted his brows with amused interest. 

“What friends did he refer to, Mr. Fogarty? Have 
you any idea?” 

“None. He seemed to imply that you might 
know.” 

Mandelle shook a perplexed head. “It leaves me 
all at sea,” he declared. “I don’t remember now 
what friends of his I came in contact with at his 
last trial; I suppose I could find out by going over 
my records, but that would use up as much time as 
undertaking his defense.” He paused and added 
genially, “I’m afraid he must get word to these 
unknowns through another messenger.” 

Fogarty was looking with a leisurely absent- 
mindedness about the office in which he had been 
received. The door into the entrance room was 
closed, but that into the dictation room stood open. 



166 ALIAS RED RYAN 

for the attorney had risen from the talking machine to 
receive him. 

On the table lay a memorandum pad bearing 
several notations, presumably reminders of appoint¬ 
ments, and though Fogarty had a trained and photo¬ 
graphic eye, it was not capable, even had it been 
making the effort, of reading them all. One jotting, 
however, was heavily ringed round with a pencil 
mark, as though it were set apart as more important 
than its fellows, and the eye of Mr. Fogarty caught 
this scribbled jotting: “Sev. M. H.” and a number 
of four digits. Also he saw a telegram lying open 
but could make nothing of it. 

“May I ask,” inquired Mandelle politely, “what 
your interest in the defendant is?” 

“Surely,” laughed Fogarty. “It’s a natural one. 
I don’t know much about Stine’s civilian activities, 
but he served under me in France. ” 

“And your civilian activities?” Mr. Mandelle 
put the interrogation courteously, but with a touch 
of rallying facetiousness, at which his guest laughed 
as he rose. 

“Unemployed, just now,” he answered. “I’m a 
peg that hasn’t fitted into its permanent hole since 
the Armistice. Luckily for me I’m not one of the 
starving. ” 

“No, you don’t look it.” 

Fogarty did not look starving. His pin-checked 
clothes were of a soft and excellent fabric and cut 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


167 


by a tailor who had done justice to the material. 
His scarf was knotted with careless effectiveness and 
pinned with a small but well lustred pearl. 

“Of course if you’re leaving town you can’t defend 
Stine,” smiled the envoy. “I’m sorry.” 

The open telegram on the table caught Mandelle’s 
eye and it occurred to him that the visitor might have 
recognized some of its purport. Now, as if in con¬ 
firmation of his verbal statement, he picked it up and 
handed it carelessly across. 

“You see, I’m called away,” he said. “That 
message is from an important client and it came a 
little while ago.” 

Fogarty glanced at the thing with just that brief 
and impersonal attention which politeness required, 
but as he handed it back, seemingly unread, he knew 
not only its content but its signature. 

“Meet me at Seelbach Hotel, Louisville, Saturday 
noon,” said the telegram, and the name was S. C. 
Cowes. 

Having ushered his visitor out Mandelle returned 
to his office and stood for a few moments in reflection. 

“Now who and what might this individual be?” 
He made interrogation in his thoughts. “He’s 
a pleasing enough lad, judged by his looks and his 
manners, but I don’t altogether like him. He s got 
the quick eye—and my guess is that he lives by his 
wits.” He paused, wagging his head slowly, as he 
digested that surmise, then he added, “And evidently 


168 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


enough he lives well by them. He’s as smooth as 
silk, if you ask me.” 

As he went down in the elevator, Don Fogarty was 
in turn digesting his impressions of the man he had 
left behind. “I don’t like the bird,” he made emphat¬ 
ic mental note. “But Lou Stine is making a wild 
guess in suspecting him.” 

In the arcade of the office building Fogarty turned 
into a telephone booth and called a number. It was 
the number that he had seen scribbled on the desk 
pad upstairs and naturally enough he assumed that 
the M. H. which preceded it stood for the exchange, 
Murray Hill. 

“Hello,” he inquired when a voice responded. 
“Who is this, please?” 

“Beverly Brothers, Furriers; administration de¬ 
partment,” came the crisp reply. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Fogarty softly. 
“They gave me the wrong number.” 

But he stood for a little while in the closed booth, 
drawing absurd little figures on the back of an 
envelope, while his mind drew less haphazard de¬ 
signs. 

“If there should be anything in Lou Stine’s sus¬ 
picions,” he told himself, “this is interesting— 
boucoup interesting. I’ll say it is. This bird’s 
special appointment to-day is with Beverly Brothers. 
Now if he’s in with the fur gang—and that’s a long- 
shot bet—it looks like he’s also in with the prosecu- 



ALIAS RED RYAN 169 

tion. If that's so, he’s apt to be double-crossing the 
gang. ” 

This latter idea seemed to interest Mr. Fogarty 
more directly and emphatically than the former. In 
a confederation such as that which had been so 
successfully pursuing a piracy in furs, there might be 
members unknown to the other members. Perhaps 
only one man knew definitely and exactly the whole 
personnel from top to bottom. 


The old town of Camden in South Carolina is not 
given an impressive rating in the census for its 
numbers of busy inhabitants, but then the census 
fails to take note of the bird population. And one 
might fancy, as he walked along the streets where the 
long-leaf pines tower and the oaks wear a winter 
dress of mistletoe, that there are almost as many 
mockingbirds as people, white and black. Neither 
does the census enumerate those other birds, the 
human birds of passage who migrate from wintrier 
latitudes to the soft lure and charm of the mid- 
South. Now these birds were there, bright of 
plumage, and along the languid streets was much 
purring of expensive motors between the centre of 
the place and the heights where the cottages of the 
winter people cluster about golf links, polo fields, and 
the charming grounds from which the Palmetto Inn 
looks down on Camden as Marathon looks on the sea. 


170 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


It was not on the more fashionable heights that 
Barbour Sevens and his little family had settled 
themselves to drink that fine air and bird music; 
it was down in the rambling old town itself in an 
ancient mansion which was now a boarding house, 
but as Hope pointed out it was that rarely found 
thing, a boarding house which is yet not a boarding 
house. 

“ Boarding houses develop a species of their own— 
generally/’ she told Barbour. “In them people 
fade into the genus boarder and merge into a kinship 
of drabness.” 

“ I know, ” he agreed. “ They can’t get away from 
the petty spirit of being fellow prisoners to necessity 
and most boarders are just that.” 

He laughed as he lighted a cigarette. “But this 
house-” 

“Oh, this house,” declared Hope delightedly, 
“is different. It’s darling.” 

It was. Its front fagade ran even with the side¬ 
walk, but it was a soft-toned street lined with trees, 
each one a venerable colossus, and the hoof-thud of 
galloping polo ponies and saddle horses went cheerily 
along it instead of nerve-grinding traffic. The walls 
themselves rose soft with a stucco tint against which 
sunlight and shifting shadow played at a game 
of everchanging embroideries, and back of an old 
brick wall, grown mossy, there was a garden which 
in January was still a garden. 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


171 


There the deodar cedars, mock orange, and cape 
myrtle were always green, and the huge walnuts and 
oaks refused to be winter skeletons, for their boles 
were ivy-wrapped and their spreading heads thick 
with mistletoe. About the birds’ bath at the centre 
ran little brick-edged geometries of hedge-bordered 
footpaths, and there was usually a chirping of car¬ 
dinals and a swaggering of insolent blue jays about the 
place. Long galleries above and below looked out 
on this garden. 

“It’s almost as if we were taking the wedding trip 
we had to postpone years ago,” smiled Hope. She 
was sitting in a steamer chair on the upper gallery 
and her eyes softened. Barbour threw away his 
cigarette and came closer. 

“But for one thing it would be heavenly,” he 
said. 

“That one thing has been left behind,” she laughed. 
“One can’t be sick here.” 

He hoped her optimism was well founded, and he 
smiled because that spirit was the medicine she most 
needed, but in his heart he had meant two things 
when he said one, and he was not so sure that the 
second was left behind. He had leaned on Mandelle 
as a cripple leans on a crutch, but now with a thou¬ 
sand or more miles between him and the lawyer’s 
assurance of manner, he looked back, and a disquiet¬ 
ing doubt gnawed at his mind. Candour is always 
best. Concealment is not only unethical but dan- 


172 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


gerous. Suppose Mandelle had, after all, erred in 
judgment? It was not Mandelle himself who would 
have to suffer the penalties of his mistake, and if 
Mandelle should die suddenly no living voice, except 
his own, which would be stultified by self-interest, 
could ever give the force of denial to the looming 
structure of false seeming. 

“Look there,” laughed Hope suddenly. 

Along the street cantered two ponies and on one 
of them rode Faith, booted and breeched, laughing 
up at a cavalier whom they had yesterday watched in 
helmet and silks in the melee of the polo field. 

“Jumping Jupiter!” exclaimed Sevens, grinning. 
“Where did the brat raise the togs and where did she 
learn to ride like that? ” 

“The togs she borrowed here in the house,” 
smiled Hope, “but the virtuosity in the saddle is a 
surprise to me.” 

Across the lobby of the Seelbach in Louisville 
a prosperous-looking business man was pacing im¬ 
patiently about noon on Saturday with an eye that 
went often to the clock over the clerk’s desk. His 
general seeming was prosperous but unchallenging, 
for as he had told Barbour Sevens on an evening 
when they sat together in a Greenwich Village tea 
room, he was “extraordinarily ordinary.” 

Yet for all this individual’s watchful impatience 
he was not on the lookout in the lobby but closed into 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


173 


a telephone booth when he heard a bellboy paging 
his name: “Mr. S. C. Cowes! Call for Mr. S. C. 
Cowes!” 

He emerged at once to follow the boy over to the 
desk where he saw Attorney Joseph Mandelle of 
New York awaiting him. There was only a per¬ 
functory handshake between the two and even after 
they had gone up in the elevator and were closeted in 
the bedroom of Mr. Cowes, the man who had from a 
distance directed the epidemic of New York robberies 
seemed in no hurry to become loquacious. 

He let Mandelle talk first, and it was not until, 
through the narrative of the new arrival, he had 
been brought up to date on every detail that he went 
further than the asking of brisk questions. Then 
it looked as if the tenor of his talk was not to be 
wholly amicable, for his eyes were smouldering resent¬ 
fully. 

“It’s been a rotten piece of business,” he began 
in sharp-edged testiness. ‘‘ It's the first time I’ve ven¬ 
tured on outside advice and that advice was yours.” 

“It was a proposition that I put up to you ten¬ 
tatively,” retorted Mandelle shortly, “and you ac¬ 
cepted it on your own judgment.” 

“It ended in murder,” continued the man who was 
registered under the fictitious name of Cowes, ig¬ 
noring his companion’s logic of self-justification. 

“That was because when I gave you warning in 
due time you went bull-headedly ahead, anyhow— 


174 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


and ran past the danger-signals. I supposed that 
when you knew Sevens was informing, you’d drop 
the thing. ” . 

“It seems,” came the dry retort, “that both of us 
were fools. Let’s cut out wrangling now and get 
down to business. The phase of the thing that I 
dislike most is the position in which you stand. ” 

“As how?” 

“As the ostensible adviser of the man we can’t 
afford to have any traffic with.” 

“And yet that is the exact position that enables 
me to hold him in line. Suppose he had stated the 
thing in full from the beginning, and called on me to 
verify his statement?” 

Cowes looked searchingly at his companion and his 
eyes narrowed. 

“If he had done that—or if by any chance he ever 
does make such a statement—there is just one thing 
you can do. I hope you understand that very clearly 
indeed?” 

“What thing?” Mandelle put his question a bit 
sullenly. 

“I’m sorry you should have to ask. You must 
without qualification repudiate him and his story— 
repudiate him utterly." 

Mandelle sat silent. That meant going deeper into 
the filth than he wanted to go. It meant out-and-out 
perjury; a perjury hard to stomach even for him. 
If it failed it must ruin him. If it succeeded and sent 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


175 


Sevens to the chair it would be a form of murder upon 
which it was not pleasant to reflect. Moreover, there 
would always be many who would believe Barbour’s 
unsupported story—outside the jury room. 

“That,” he remarked, after an uncomfortable 
silence, “is a situation that must at all hazards be 
avoided.” 

“At all hazards—but one, ” Cowes made aggressive 
amendment. “If it comes to choosing between that 
and failing me, I’d advise you to do even so distaste¬ 
ful a thing as throwing Sevens to the sharks.” 

Mandelle rose from his chair a trifle unsteadily, 
and went to the window, where he stood looking out 
over the town roofs to the rim of Indiana hills across 
the Ohio. 

Then he turned, and his voice was low but stub¬ 
bornly assertive. 

“I take it we both understand that we can’t 
afford to split or quarrel,” he said, “but I object to 
any tone of domineering. As I see it, you need me 
as much as I need you. So far as I have information 
only three men know what your part has been. Red, 
the actual murderer, is one. Sevens is another—and 
I myself am the third. I suppose you can answer 
for Red. I propose to answer for Sevens. As for 
myself, our interests are identical.” 

“ Correct, ” affirmed Cowes. “ I’ll answer for Red. 
You say you’ll answer for Sevens, but you also say he 
has gone South. Suppose he weakens?” 



176 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“I'm going South, too , 55 answered Mandelle. “I'm 
going to stay South as long as he does." 

“That's what I was about to urge," commented 
the other. “And if I were you, I’d go from here. 
The Carolina Special leaves Seventh Street about 
eight o'clock this evening." 

He paused, then coming closer, Cowes held out his 
hand. “I think you'd better let me have the Sevens 
confession," he suggested. “It’s wise to keep all the 
records together." 

Mandelle drew back and his face paled, but he 
shook his head. He had no intent of surrendering 
that paper upon which, in certain circumstances, his 
whole power would rest, but neither had he any wish 
to risk a quarrel if he might succeed by more diplo¬ 
matic measures. 

“I think," he said in a conciliatory tone, “that 
would be a great mistake. A situation might arise 
in which it came to a final battle between Sevens and 
myself. In such a case I could always disarm him by 
telling him flatly that he must*sit pretty, or I’d 
throw him overboard." He paused a moment, then 
amplified. “In such a situation, that paper flashed 
before his eyes would be better than a loaded gun— 
but that’s only in case of desperation." 

Cowes realized that for two men who must stick 
together there had already been too much the spirit 
of antagonism. Grudgingly he yielded the point, 
and Mandelle raised another. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


177 


“In one practice that has always been observed 
between us heretofore, you’ve defaulted, Cowes,” he 
said. 

“I don’t get you.” 

“On the day that Tom Shell told me of this plan 
to trap the thieves, I sent you a warning. ” 

The other nodded. 

“And since it wasn’t sent in the form of a letter 
or a telephone message the tangible thing is outstand¬ 
ing. You’ve always returned such records to me 
before, so that I might, myself, destroy them.” 

“It was in a safe cipher.” 

“Yes, but all codes are breakable. I want it back 
in my own hands. I’ve just had a lesson in things 
presumably destroyed that aren’t destroyed.” 

“I’m afraid,” said the chief slowly, “that went 
with other things that were sent straight through to 
St. Louis. Shall I trust it to the mails? ” 

“Yes, registered,” responded Mandelle. “I’ll 
trust the cipher as long as it takes the package to 
travel in the mail sack—but not permanently.” 

After the two had parted Cowes talked with an¬ 
other lieutenant. 

“I imagine Mandelle will stick all right,” he said. 
“But just the same, I want him watched. When 
you get back to New York, I’ll give you instructions. 
I want our learned counsel shadowed a bit down there 
in Camden, and the man to do it is in Brooklyn.” 




CHAPTER XIV 

B ARBOUR SEVENS and his family had been 
I at Mrs. Sangster’s only a few days, yet 
already the restful charm of the old house 
and the older town had laid upon them a pleasantly 
familiar spell. Already they could recognize and 
call by name some of the polo ponies that went patter¬ 
ing along the streets. They were proud in that new 
and simple wisdom which enabled them to remark 
casually that Barstow was a “five-goal man” and 
that Carson always saved the bay mare Flash-light 
for the final chukker in a close contest. Barbour 
and Hope could go only this far in freshly gained 
knowledge, but Faith was more advanced. She not 
only knew the ponies by name but she had ridden 
several of them and fed them lumps of sugar at their 
stall doors. As for the owners of the horses, they 
were stamping their boot-heels and clinking their 
spurs along the gallery of Mrs. Sangster’s house with 
the frequency of young adjutants about staff head¬ 
quarters. 

Sevens swung, pendulum-wise, between joy oc¬ 
casioned by Doctor Corbin’s cheery pronouncements 
as he glanced in on Hope, and the canker-like germs 

178 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


179 


of anxiety that were gnawing away at his own 
thoughts with a toxin for which the physician had 
no remedy. 

It was as he walked alone one afternoon toward 
the heights where the polo squads were to meet in a 
practice game on the Number Two field that surprise 
met him in human guise. Faith had motored up with 
some young man in boots and breeches and Hope was 
idling over a novel on the sunlit upper gallery. 

So Barbour strode along the sandy sidewalk, 
gazing absently at the bark of the great pines which 
looked like alligator skin seen through a magnifying 
glass—when he came face to face with Joe Mandelle. 

Since it is not given to the ordinary eye to see on 
both sides of a wall at once, Sevens did not recognize 
in the spruce figure and smiling face of the lawyer any 
portent of treachery. No psychic vibration carried 
a warning to his heart that this supposed friend and 
trusted guide was leading him slowly but inevitably 
down a blind alley of tragedy toward disgrace and the 
seeming of felony. He saw only the man upon whose 
assurance he had leaned and in whose absence he had 
felt assailed by unending fears. 

In that spirit of relief he halted and stared and it 
was Mandelle who spoke first. 

“Surprised to see me here, what?” he laughed. 
“I don’t blame you. But don’t look at me as if I 
were a ghost or an executioner. I don’t come bearing 
evil tidings.” 



180 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“What does bring you?” The question came 
quickly with a mingling of anxiety and delight. 

“I was pretty well tired out by a busy winter 
and I decided to run away and ease up a bit in a 
place where I had friends.” 

Mandelle smiled and paused, and then added in a 
tone of unstrained kindliness: “It occurred to me, 
too, that you might be feeling nervous off here with 
your thoughts, and that I might reassure you while 
I rested.” 

“ Great! ” exclaimed Sevens. “ I have been worry¬ 
ing a little. I can’t get over the feeling that con¬ 
cealment of truth is kissing-kin to guilt in a way. 
But—” he broke off and his tone sharpened with 
apprehension—“but doesn’t someone have to watch 
things—back there?” 

Mandelle laughed. “My office is keeping its 
fingers on the pulse of things. I shall know at once 
of any flutter that needs my presence. But your 
danger passed when we established the fact that 
Shell tore up your fool confession. ” 

“Thank God,” exclaimed Sevens devoutly, “that 
we laid that ghost. ” 

Mandelle was stopping at the Palmetto Inn on the 
hill but he became a frequent visitor at Mrs. Sang- 
ster’s, where he and Hope fenced blithely with 
lightly clashing blades of repartee while her eyes 
sparkled and his glowed in humorous apprecia¬ 
tion. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


181 


On a Saturday evening, when the air held a softness 
of caressing warmth that seemed tinctured with 
magic to their more northern ideas of January, they 
all went to a dance at the hotel, and though Barbour 
sat out the numbers with his wife, who was not danc¬ 
ing, Faith maintained the family average for active 
participation on the floor. 

Mandelle was sitting with them when, half way 
through the evening, he glanced up and started so 
abruptly that something he w T as saying came to a 
broken stop. Though he went on with almost 
immediate resumption, his eyes persistently held 
the door from the lobby proper to the smaller room 
in which their chairs had been placed. 

» Following that glance, Barbour saw the figure of 
a guest whom he had not noticed before standing on 
the threshold and looking idly about with the air of a 
man who has recently arrived and who orients himself 
deliberately in new surroundings. 

It was a man who, though palpably young, had 
sandy hair graying about its temples and a face 
modelled in vigorous lines and angles to a rather 
pleasing homeliness. Out of that face the eyes, which 
were blue, shone with an arresting alertness and 
brightness, like strong lamps lighted in a plain, 
almost bare, room. The stranger was slenderly 
but strongly built, with a declaration of nervous 
force in his movements, and he wore the inconspicu¬ 
ous uniform of dinner-jacketed evening dress. 


182 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“Why the sudden interest in a new guest, Joe?” 
inquired Sevens, and the attorney smiled. 

“No good reason,” responded Mandelle, self- 
annoyed at his abrupt manifestation of surprise. 
“ That fellow in the door came into my office recently 
to try to get me to defend a suspected gunman, that’s 
all. His name’s Fogarty and for the moment I 
couldn’t place him.” 

“Is he a gunman, too?” demanded Hope with a 
livened interest. “In these days of dressy criminals, 
one wouldn’t be surprised.” 

The lawyer laughed. “Always questing after the 
romantic angle, aren’t you?” he challenged. “But 
I’m afraid I can’t play up to your demand this time. 
Mr. Fogarty explained that he was interested in the 
defendant because that defendant had served under 
him overseas.” 

“Well, he’s a fast worker,” Barbour paid tribute 
with a grin. “He’s already met enough of the young 
bucks, it seems, to get himself introduced to the girls.” 

For Fogarty had been joined at the door by a man 
who had been longer in residence here than himself, 
and now the two were shunting rapidly across the 
dancing floor to “cut in” on Faith. There was a 
hurried presentation and Fogarty was gliding away 
with Barbour’s kid sister-in-law. 

“He dances like a streak,” exclaimed Hope ad¬ 
miringly, and Mandelle supplemented drily, “Yes— 
or a lounge lizard.” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


183 


The music reached its end, was encored, and after 
that the new guest came slowly over, with Faith, to 
the chairs where the older members of the family sat, 
and was bowing in acknowledgment of his introduc¬ 
tion. 

At sight of Mandelle, Mr. Fogarty lifted his brows 
in slight surprise. 

“I’ve had the pleasure, once before,” he said. 
“ We seem to have struck a common orbit, don’t we? ” 
Do you ride horseback, Mr. Fogarty?” Faith was 
asking with just that touch of young eagerness that 
argued pleasure for a new acquisition, and the young 
man laughed. 

“God and the horse willing,” he made modest 
answer. “But it has to be a unanimous consent.” 

The dance was over and those guests from outside 
the hotel had motored away over the gravelled 
driveways or strolled to their near-by cottages when, 
in a second-story hall, Mandelle and Fogarty met 
again. 

It seemed that coincidence had again brushed 
them with its touch, for now each of them was 
fitting a room key into a room door and they found 
themselves immediate neighbours. 

“By the way, Fogarty,” inquired Mandelle light¬ 
ly, “did your man in New York get satisfactorily 
fixed up as to legal advice?” 

Fogarty grinned. “As near as I could make out,” 
he said, “the mysterious friends of whom he spoke 


184 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


‘came through.’ I went to the jail to carry your an¬ 
swer—and I found a legal gentleman there who was 
already undertaking the defense.” 

When the two doors closed, Mandelle did not at 
once go to bed. He sat for a while over a freshly 
lighted cigar and a train of freshly kindled thought. 

Was the arrival of this stranger who had, for no 
very definite reason, excited his suspicion on their 
first meeting, only one of the many coincidences of 
human goings and comings, or was it something more? 

There had been a lurking disquiet in his mind since 
that talk with the man who called himself Cowes in 
Louisville. Cowes had assumed an attitude of half- 
threat, and having sent him here to watch Sevens 
it was quite within the character of that puller-of- 
wires to have, in turn, sent another liaison officer 
to spy upon him. If so, it was a thing that savoured 
of insult. Had Fogarty’s first visit to him there in his 
office been really a reconnoitring trip, he wondered, 
undertaken at the behest of Cowes and his crowd 
to feel out his own discretion and reliability? And 
if that were true, as it might or might not be, was not 
Fogarty just the man to continue that most annoying 
espionage on his movements here? 

At all events, Mandelle had felt, there in his own 
office, some indefinable spirit of distrust for this 
fellow whose shrewd eyes looked out lazily yet with 
a deviltry of keenness, too. He had bristled in an¬ 
tagonism, and had been conscious of a sense of relief 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


185 


when Fogarty had taken himself off. Now Fogarty 
was again present. 

Of course, argued the attorney, this was all just 
the action and reaction of a mind whose situation 
made it overly suspicious and given to the gusty 
play of prejudices. Yet he had, before this, ex¬ 
perienced intuitive dislikes and had found it well to 
heed their warnings. 

The presence of Don Fogarty under the same roof 
irritated him and made him fretfully wakeful, 
whatever the cause of the phenomenon—but for that 
very reason he resolved on a course of outward 
friendliness. To this Fogarty person, even more 
than to other chance acquaintances, he would extend 
overtures of comradeship, and for the present he 
would keep his suspicions tight-locked in his own 
consciousness. 

The next few days did not alleviate his unrest of 
spirit, for, like the rest, Fogarty had discovered the 
Sangster house, and it was written plain to the observ¬ 
ing eye that the Sangster house liked Fogarty. It 
was to see Faith that he probably made the old garden 
a port of call as he strolled from the heights to the 
post office and back again, but when Faith was not 
in evidence, he seemed content to sit and smoke with 
Barbour Sevens, and between the two there sprung 
into quick being the easy cordiality of a mutually 
agreeable association. 

“They’ve all fallen for him hard,” reflected Man- 


186 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


delle. “And if he did come here at Cowes’s orders, 
that would be just the thing he’d be apt to play for. 
That would be the wise policy.” 

Perhaps it was only Faith who came near knowing 
the stranger, because it was to her only that he 
showed any guise except that of a ready wit and drift¬ 
ing carelessness. She saw the somewhat ruggedly 
patterned face in soberer phases, when the blue eyes 
grew almost gray like sea water under fog banks, but 
that was always when they were alone. 

They drew their ponies to a standstill one day at 
a point called the Precipice. There from a sand 
bluff that was high only in comparison with the low¬ 
lands under it, the eye swung wide and the town 
itself sprawled distant and almost woodland hidden. 
But Fogarty’s glance, after a cursory survey, came 
back to the face of the girl, who sat looking out with 
the rapt enthusiasm of her youth while her pony 
tugged at the reins, and, finding them loose, went to 
nuzzling in the grass. 

She made an engaging picture, as the breeze stirred 
the hair at the smooth nape of her neck and the 
sunlight searched the delicate gorgeousness of her 
cheeks and betrayed no flaw in their dewy freshness. 
Perhaps that picture gave Don Fogarty thought, 
for his own eyes took on their fog-darkness as he 
looked at her. 

“I never knew any one like you before,” he found 
himself saying as though it were a soliloquy, and 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


187 


Faith brought her eyes back from their ranging, to 
turn laughingly. 

“That might be a very nice thing to say, or a 
very horrid thing, ” she announced. “ It’s like a door 
that opens both ways. ” 

“I meant it to be the nicest thing possible,” he 
told her, and the earnestness of his voice made it 
almost grim. 

“If it comes to that,” she answered lightly, be¬ 
cause his seriousness seemed to need the tempering 
of levity, “I never knew any one exactly like you 
before, either.” 

“Meaning which side of the door?” he demanded. 

“Perhaps,” she countered, “I wasn’t putting up 
any door between the sheep and the goats. I mean 
that you’re—well, it’s rather hard to say, but I like 
it.” 

Mr. Fogarty’s eyes did not twinkle with their 
customary humour. They were still sober, as sober 
as though he were pursuing this light conversation 
toward some vitally serious end. 

“If you like it—I mean the thing that makes me 
different—I wish you’d try to define it. I haven’t 
such an abundance of personal assets that I can let 
any one of them go unscheduled.” 

Faith puckered her brow very prettily and nodded 
good-naturedly. 

“I think the chief thing is that while you strike 
one as a—well, I suppose the term sophisticated will 



188 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


have to do though it’s a poor one—still you don't 
pretend to be bored at things. There’s something 
sort of—well, eager about you.” 

He smiled then, not dashingly as he sometimes did, 
but slowly. 

‘‘I’m rather glad you said that,” he assured her. 
“And yet I’m afraid when I tell you why I’m that 
way, it will spoil your opinion of me. ” 

“Tell me why and see. ” 

“I’m going to. I’ve got to in honesty, and with 
you I must be honest.” 

“Then why are you different in the way I tried 
so unsuccessfully to express?” 

Fogarty’s pony was nuzzling at the grass, too, now, 
while the reins hung. 

“Because I haven’t known these phases of life 
that bring social sophistication long enough to 
tire of them. They’re still novelties to me. ” 

“What do you mean?” She looked up, a little 
puzzled and more than a little interested. 

“I mean that I’ve got to employ another term 
that’s rubbed shabby with over-use—I’m what they 
call a self-made man. I came up from the street. ” 

“So much the better,” she rendered prompt 
verdict. “You did come up.” 

“Perhaps I only came far enough to ape and parrot 
fairly well the manners and conduct that ought to 
flow out of instinct,” he smiled. “You see, all that 
I’ve got is front while you, for instance, have back- 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


189 


ground that runs back for generations/’ He paused, 
but the thoughtful look in his eyes told the girl that 
he was not yet through and she waited for him to 
finish. 

“I wonder if you realize what a difference there 
is between front and background? It’s precisely 
the difference that exists between an elegant old 
house, with contents that have come slowly into it 
and with associations attaching to them all and— 
well, one of these make-believe house fronts that they 
build on the moving-picture lot—a single wall with 
nothing behind it—nothing inside it—just show.” 

The girl shook her head. 

“There’s more behind your front than that,” 
she said. There’s whatever made you ‘come up,’ as 
you call it. There’s the sort of kindly feeling and 
gentleness that isn’t aped or parroted. It can’t be. ” 

The man smiled and gathered up his reins. 

“Thank you again,” he said. “I think I have 
a kindly feeling for most people. I’m not a good 
hater, though there have been times when I ought 
to have hated implacably—and couldn’t manage to 
doit.” i 

They turned the horses homeward, and Fogarty 
curbed his dangerous trend of impulse toward the 
personal. He was watching himself now because 
it had suddenly come to him to realize that he had 
not been far from making love to this girl, and that 
would never do. He had not supposed there was any 


190 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


danger of it until this afternoon, but some wilful 
spirit had possessed him up there and made him 
want to cast caution to the winds and let his heart 
gallop loose-reined. He must not let that happen 
again, but he knew that the wish had come to him, 
and he suspected that it would stay and besiege him 
with augmented force, until, if he were not careful, 
his emotions would carry him by assault. 

He was surprised and yet not surprised. Love 
and lightning never strike until they strike—and 
then they can’t be recalled. Faith was easy to love 
and he loved her, but that was as far as it could go. 
Many people had come to Camden for pleasure or 
upbuilding of health. He had come for neither and, 
to him, any challenge of sentiment was a siren song 
against which he must stuff his ears and bind him¬ 
self to the mast. 

When all was said and done his business wasn’t 
a very pretty affair—but it was urgent and he was 
committed to its completion. 


r i 


CHAPTER XV 


J OE MANDELLE saw, with the edged shrewd¬ 
ness of his own concern, that Barbour’s sister- 
in-law listened to the conversation of Don 
Fogarty with an interest which she did not accord 
in like measure to the tourist polo players or the 
soft-voiced young Carolinians. Often when the 
two were together, the lawyer observed that, “his 
eyes were taking fire, and she flung him look for 
look”—and these were things that fanned Mandelle’s 
anxiety into a resolve for action. 

He had, for his own part, maintained a studied 
friendship with Fogarty, but that became a more 
and more difficult attitude to maintain as he realized 
with what penetration the quiet eyes were seeing and 
recording. When those eyes looked at him most 
lazily, they made him feel most hunted, and the in¬ 
quisitiveness to know something more of this stranger 
mounted in him until it became an imperative 
obsession. Cowes had not yet sent the registered 
package containing the communication in code, and 
Mandelle began to fret under a growing conviction 
that he was being spied on and evaded by an arrogant 
tyrant. Quite suddenly a decision came out of these 

191 


192 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


simmering emotions, and under a plea of being 
called North on business, he left South Carolina. 

It was not to New York he went, but Washington. 
He had friends there who could be of service to him 
in his present puzzlement, and he was bent on running 
down Fogarty’s military history, and seeing if by 
any chance it might shed any light on other phases of 
his activities earlier or later. 

His absence covered a few days only, and in Cam¬ 
den those were days of placid uneventfulness, at 
least in such outward manifestations as met the eye. 
But Don Fogarty, lounging over the cigar counter 
which went across the front of the hotel office, was 
keeping, with his seemingly indolent eyes, a watch 
as close as that maintained from the bridge of a ship, 
and he saw several things that were not trivial to 
him. He timed his goings and comings in such a 
fashion that whenever the station wagon brought 
incoming mail his educated glance noted what 
envelopes were shoved into the letter box just to the 
right of his own—that which held mail for Joe 
Mandelle. It was on the day after the absentee’s 
departure that a coloured card was slipped into that 
box and Fogarty knew that such cards from the local 
post office bore notification to the addressee to call 
at the office and sign for registered mail. 

Going back to his own room that morning, he 
waited patiently until he heard the key turn in the 
door to the right of his own, indicating that a 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


193 


chambermaid was letting herself into Mandelle’s 
quarters. The listener wanted, under excuse of 
speaking to her, to enter that legitimately opened 
door for a moment or two of swift survey—because, 
despite his show of friendliness, Mandelle had never 
invited him across the threshold. 

As he entered with an apologetic, yet matter-of- 
fact air, the maid appeared on the bathroom thresh¬ 
old with towels draped across her forearm. 

“I beg your pardon,” said Fogarty, “but I heard 
you in here and I came to ask you for an extra blanket 
on my bed. I like to sleep with my windows open— 
and sometimes I could use that extra cover.” 

Fogarty’s eyes were seemingly on the face of the 
woman as he spoke, and when he finished he turned 
and went out at once, but he had had time to notice 
where the occupant’s trunk stood—and that it was, 
even in his absence, unlocked. That proved con¬ 
clusively enough for his satisfaction that the trunk 
held nothing of a secret nature. The clothes closet 
also stood ajar and Fogarty reasoned that if Mandelle 
had had about him, during his stay in Camden, any 
documents of confidential value, they were either in 
the office safe or he had taken them away with him. 

Now the investigator went downstairs and out of 
the door. He was bound for the Sangster house and 
a leisurely cigar on its veranda. 

That night, though, he did not go to bed until the 
clock had stood two hours beyond midnight. 


194 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Through the extended spaces of the hotel there was 
now entire silence, and Don Fogarty, who wore 
soft-soled tennis sneakers, slipped noiselessly down 
the stairs to the office floor. The place was empty 
except for a night clerk who napped in his chair and 
it was dimly lighted. The prowling guest slipped so 
noiselessly into the office that the drowsing figure did 
not stir, and, extracting from Joe Mandelle’s letter 
box the coloured card calling for registered mail, he 
deftly transferred it into his own. 

To have purloined it would have been incautious, 
but to have it delivered into his hand by the clerk on 
the next morning would excite no suspicion. Then if 
any question arose the thing would stand explained 
on the reasonable assumption that, in the distribution 
of mail, one piece had been wrongly pigeon-holed. 

The plan worked out as he had devised it, and on 
the next morning, with the card in his pocket, Fogarty 
went to the post office and handed it through the 
window—but when the book was pushed forward to 
him, for his signature, he raised his brows in surprise. 
The name of the addressee was not his own, but that 
of another. The clerk at the registry window had 
already turned away and come back, bringing a small 
cardboard box which he laid on the shelf before Mr. 
Fogarty. 

Mr. Fogarty gazed at it absent-mindedly and 
rather stupidly. He even turned it about in his 
hand and quickly calculated its heft and weight. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


195 


He memorized the return address and postmark, 
then he shook his head and thrust it back. 

“This seems to be a mistake,” he said. “This 
isn’t directed to me, after all. The card must have 
gotten wrongly into my box at the hotel—and I 
glanced at it too hurriedly to notice the fact. Sorry 
to have troubled you.” 

Fogarty had not contemplated robbing the regis¬ 
tered mails, but he had wished to identify that 
package so that when he saw it again he might 
identify it—and he meant to see it again. 

But when Mandelle, upon his return, stepped out 
of the depot wagon and entered the hotel, Fogarty 
drew himself lazily out of an easy chair near the desk 
and lounged over to welcome him back. 

The returned traveller was handed his mail and 
spoke in a low voice to the clerk, who nodded under¬ 
standing^ and turned to the safe. From it he 
produced and delivered to Mandelle an envelope 
of ordinary letter size and flat enough to indicate 
that it held no great bulk of content. This envelope, 
Fogarty saw, as the attorney thrust it into his breast¬ 
pocket, was sealed not once but three times with red 
wax. 

As Mandelle climbed the stairs to his own room, 
a Negro boy preceded him, carrying his bag, and 
Fogarty followed casually after the interval of about 
two minutes. 

Before the door of the attorney’s room had closed 


196 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


behind the retiring bellboy Fogarty rapped lightly 
on it, and let himself in with the air of one who as¬ 
sumes a welcome before it is expressed. 

The lawyer had thrown his mail down on the table, 
and, at the other’s entrance, he wheeled from a 
position beside it, suppressing an irritated flash that 
shot into his eyes at the intrusion. In his hands he 
held the envelope that he had taken from the safe, 
and though he had been in the act of tearing it open, 
he now thrust it back again into his breast pocket. 
This he did with a deliberateness calculated to avoid 
any seeming of special significance, but Don Fogarty 
had seen enough to confirm his idea that whatever 
the envelope contained was of a private nature and of 
such importance that its possessor had not cared to 
risk losing it on his journey. Now in spite of its 
unbroken seals Mandelle’s first concern on reaching 
his room had been to assure himself that in his ab¬ 
sence nothing had happened to it. 

Fogarty lounged forward and perched himself on 
the arm of a chair. 

“Glad to see you back, old man,” he declared. 
“You’ve got a registered package in the post office.” 

His inhospitable host looked up quickly and with 
a momentary frown. He had started nervously at 
the sudden irrelevancy of the announcement and 
now he grunted shortly, “Is that so?” 

“Yes,” chattered on Fogarty. “I know because 
that card got into my box by mistake and I walked all 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


197 


the way down to the post office before I discovered 
that I was on a wild-goose chase. They shoved the 
book out to be signed and I saw your name. Was 
it an agreeable trip?” 

“Tolerable,” answered Mandelle. “Just business 
and tiresome. I’ll have to ask you to excuse me now. 
I want to get into the tub.” 

“Of course, I just dropped in to extend the glad 
hand of welcome.” Fogarty rose, yawned, and 
drifted out. 

That afternoon the lawyer and Barbour Sevens 
took a long tramp into the pine woods, and it was 
when they had reached a place of seclusion and sat 
with kindled pipes that Mandelle came to his point. 

“I’ve got a nasty bit of news for you, Barb,” he 
said. “The thing shocked me when it began dawn¬ 
ing, and I said nothing about it until I’d looked into 
it enough to be sure I wasn’t imagining it all.” 

Sevens’s face, sunburned and flushed from fast 
walking, paled a little with the sudden stab of appre¬ 
hension. His fears had been dying down of late, 
but there was always the underlying smoulder of an 
anxiety ready to leap into fresh blazing. 

“ What is it? ” The question came tensely. “ Don’t 
keep me in suspense.” 

“This fellow Fogarty seems to be an envoy of the 
fur thieves. I believe he came here to watch your 
attitude and relay his reports—to others.” 

“Fogarty!” Sevens snapped out the name like the 


198 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


cracking of a whip. “I don’t believe it, Joe. Fo¬ 
garty’s a decent chap. How can you know?” 

“I can’t blow but I can feel morally sure. I’ve 
been looking into his military record, and it’s bad. 
This suspicion came to me some time ago, but I kept 
my mouth shut until I went to Washington. I 
found that he was an intelligence officer during the 
war—and that through him news got to the enemy. 
That much is there on file.” 

“Why wasn’t he court-martialled?” 

“Charges were preferred for a G. C. M., but it 
was just at the time of the big shove, and seemingly 
he had influence. In a crisis of graver import the 
thing was put off—and finally it was allowed to die 
out altogether. They let him resign after the Armis¬ 
tice. There seems to be strong evidence of some 
crookedness in his youth. I couldn’t run that down.” 

Sevens sat staring moodily ahead. His friendship 
with Don Fogarty had been brief and bom of 
chance, but he realized that it had grown both 
rapidly and staunchly—and there was Faith. Faith 
would believe no such story without convincing 
proof, and of this, Barbour reminded the lawyer. 

“I’ve thought of that, too,” came the grave re¬ 
sponse. “And just now it would be unwise for 
either you or me to evince any sudden hostility to the 
man. He must remain without suspicion while we 
stand vigilantly on guard. After all, he can’t do any¬ 
thing but look on, and if we know his purpose-” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


199 


“But Faith,” interrupted Sevens vehemently. “I 
can’t have Faith running about with a black-leg and 
a crook.” 

“There’s one thing I can speak of—and prove,” 
suggested Mandelle slowly. “The military record 
can crop out. A girl like Faith wouldn’t stand for 
that. Suppose you leave it to me.” 

Barbour walked home with a head that sagged 
forward in depressed wretchedness, and when he met 
Fogarty at the door, just taking his leave, it was hard 
to accept the hand that was smilingly thrust out to 
him. 

The occasion which Mandelle had anticipated was 
offered him with unexpected promptness, for the next 
day he was driving in a dog cart several miles from 
town when he met Faith walking alone. She had 
tramped farther than she realized, and was tired, 
and she smilingly accepted his offer to pick her up 
and put her down at her 4 own door. 

When they had driven a short distance, Mandelle 
looked at her with a candid directness and asked, 
“Faith, how well do you like Don Fogarty?” 

Her sudden flush was an answer in itself, but be¬ 
cause he had spoken with an outright frankness she 
replied in like honesty. 

“I rather think I—like him better than any other 
man I know.” 

“I was afraid so.” 

“Why afraid?” Her deep eyes flashed with a 


200 ALIAS RED RYAN 

sudden battle spark, and Mandelle regretfully shook 
his head. 

“If there’s any role that’s particularly distasteful 
to me,” he made sober assertion, “it’s to speak 
critically to one friend of another, but-” 

“But what?” 

“I’ve just had occasion to make certain legal 
investigations in the archives of the War Depart¬ 
ment, and I came there on some records touching 
Fogarty. I felt you ought to know them.” 

“Things you mean—that are discreditable?” 

“Tilings that are discreditable.” 

The girl looked silently away, then suddenly 
turned back to him eyes that were calm but danger¬ 
ously clouded. 

“When anybody makes an accusation—especially 
if it’s of a shameful thing—he ought to be willing to 
face the man he accuses. Don’t you think so?” 

“Usually,” responded Mandelle drily. “But a 
lawyer’s work is largely confidential and sometimes 

i 

he can’t be as outspoken as he’d like to be because of 
the interests of others. I thought you ought to know 
where these records could be found so that you might 
verify them for yourself. . . . Still I realized 

that you would feel as you do and I admire your 
loyalty. You can quote me if you choose.” 

Again Faith sat silent for a while with her hands 
lying limp in her lap, then she said slowly in a dulled 
voice: “I won’t quote you. I suppose it’s cowardly 




ALIAS RED RYAN 201 

not to face the truth—if it is the truth. What were 
these things you learned?” 

As the pony plodded slowly along the sandy and 
shaded way he told her, and her bright colour faded 
while she listened, but when she reached the house 
she nodded with a brief “ Thank you,” and went at 
once to the cloister of her own room to sit there dry¬ 
eyed and unspeakably miserable. 

That night Fogarty came to the house, and the 
girl went with him for a walk along the moonlit 
streets at whose sides stucco-soft walls loomed like a 
stage-set in flat-toned picturesqueness. W 7 hen they 
reached the open square where stands the monument 
to the Mexican war dead, she sat on a bench and said 
with quick and direct bitterness: “I brought you 
here to say good-bye to you. It seems we’ve been 
mistaken in each other.” 

“Mistaken?” he repeated. “I haven’t been mis¬ 
taken in you. Perhaps you have in me, but I tried 
to warn you that I came up from beginnings that 
weren’t proud.” 

“I don’t mean your beginnings,” sjie said. “So 
long as you had come up, that didn’t matter.” 

“What have you heard about me?” he demanded, 
and his face under the moonlight looked stony in its 
angled modelling. “And from whom?” 

“Does it matter from whom?” 

He was silent for a moment. Then he answered 
briefly, “No.” 


202 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Faith found it impossible to go on just then, and 
after a little he reached into his pocket and drew out 
a small card. This he handed to her, flashing upon 
it, as she took it with a mechanical gesture, the light 
from a pocket torch. 

She found herself looking at a highly glazed 
photograph of a shock-headed boy with a collarless 
shirt and features sneering out in an expression of 
cheap bravado. On one corner of the cardboard 
there was a number, and while she still looked, the 
man said: “Turn it over.” 

Faith obeyed, and on the back she found a series of 
dotted lines at the front of each of which appeared a 
printed word or two, followed by entries in ink. 
At the top were the words “Name and aliases,” but 
the ink notation after that had been erased. Below 
were age, height, weight, and the like. 

“It—it looks like a passport card—except for the 
aliases,” she said weakly, and his own voice came 
strong and even by contrast though it was palpably 
forced. 

“It’s a Rogues’ Gallery portrait,” he enlightened 
her. “That boy was myself at the age of eighteen. 
I was a pickpocket and yegg.” 

The girl dropped the portrait and covered her face 
with her hands and Fogarty stooped and retrieved 
the thing, thrusting it back into his pocket. 

“I wanted to tell you all of that—before someone 
else did,” he said miserably, “but I was in a fool’s 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


203 


paradise and I put it off. Instead of in high schools 
I was educated in reform schools, and instead of from 
a college, I graduated from the gutter. My father 
was a newspaper cartoonist in the Middle West, a 
genius and a drunkard. He never had much time 
to give to his children and his wife was dead. You 
see, I didn’t have the best chance in the world to 
start right and I didn’t make the chance for myself. 
The only thing I was ever proud of in those days was 
being clever—as a crook.” 

Faith gave a little gasp. 

“I didn’t know any of that,” she declared. “I 
hadn’t heard you accused of anything of that sort. 
I couldn’t even quite believe what I did hear, until 
you’d had a chance to speak for yourself.” 

“So I’m convicted out of my own mouth,” he went 
on in a low-toned misery. “Well, as I said once 
before, I must be honest with you, but I’d hoped that 
it would make some difference when vou realized 

•s 

that I did come out of that muck, in the end. What 
was it you heard about me?” 

She took the hands away from her face and shud¬ 
dered. 

“I heard that you were an intelligence officer just 
before the war ended and that you were sent to 
investigate the possibilities of throwing forward a 
great attack at a certain point.” 

“That was true,” he stated in her pause. 

“I heard that Through the indiscretion of an 


204 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


American officer’—those were the official words, I 
believe, the Germans knew all about the plan before 
it was ready—and it had to be abandoned.” 

“That’s true, too,” he corroborated. “I was the 
officer through whose ‘indiscretion’ the secret leaked. 
What else?” 

“Isn’t that enough?” 

“Enough and more, but it isn’t quite all. Charges 
were preferred against me . . . but they were 

put off . . . they never came to trial . . 

I was allowed to resign, without being cashiered, after 
the war was over.” 

“And you have nothing more to say than that?” 

“I have only a story to tell you by way of alle¬ 
gory,” he answered her quietly. “The same sort of 
thing happened once to another officer, and he wasn’t 
a traitor.” 

“Not a traitor!” 

“Not a traitor,” repeated the man doggedly. 
“The plan for the attack, in the case of my story, was 
not a genuine plan. It was a feint to deceive the 
enemy and decoy him away from the true objective. 
It was a plan that was no good unless it leaked, and 
it must seem to leak very accidentally.” 

“You mean?” 

“I mean that in the case of my allegory the officer 
was instructed to be ‘indiscreet’ but his fellows 
mustn’t know it. The secret couldn’t be shared even 
with brother officers. When the attack was launched 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


205 


at the genuinely designated point, from which 
attention had been distracted, the officer who had 
been ‘indiscreet’ had to face charges. Only the staff 
knew the truth, and the staff saw that the charges 
were never pressed.” 

Faith sat suddenly forward and an eager light came 
into her eyes. 

“Were you that officer?” she demanded, and Fo¬ 
garty shook his head. “It’s only an allegory,” he 
answered dismally. “I told it to show that appear¬ 
ances may be very conclusive and yet very false.” 

Faith rose slowly and stood for a moment irreso¬ 
lute. 

“If you told me that the allegory was true—of 
yourself, I’d believe it absolutely with all my heart. 
I want to believe it.” 

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. 

Ten minutes later she had said good-night at the 
street door of her house and he had turned back 
toward the heights. 



CHAPTER XVI 


I N HIS own bedroom that night Fogarty sat for 
an hour or more in an attitude of silent dejection 
and cheerless thought. The cigarette that he had 
lighted died in his fingers, and when he tossed it away 
to kindle a fresh one, it was only to let the second go 
dead as had the first. 

At length, however, he rose and shook himself like a 
dog that has come out of chilling water. It was as if, 
having permitted himself so much indulgence in per¬ 
sonal despondency, he now pulled together his ener¬ 
gies for the facing and undertaking of problems less 
close to his own feelings yet more exacting and imper¬ 
ative. His eyes were as hard and keen as edged tools 
and as devoid of any emotional quality. Trying his 
door to assure himself that it was locked and drawing 
the blind down to a complete cloaking of his window, he 
took from his trunk a canvas-wrapped package which 
he opened with fingers that moved in deft precision. 

On his bed, as he unfolded the wrappings, the light 
caught and gave back reflections from metal points 
and edges and angles; things of chrome nickel and 
vanadium steel and wrought-iron—but most of these 
he disregarded, looking for something else. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 207 

Spread out there before him Fogarty had a collec¬ 
tion of burglar tools, and of their sort they were 
implements that represented the highest technique 
and quality of illicit manufacture. 

Scientific brains and finished craftsmanship had 
gone into the making of these things until they stood 
as small monuments to perverted art. 

Fogarty first laid down a wax impression, and that 
was an impression he had surreptitiously made of the 
pass key, while the maid worked about his room. 
Then from a collection of blank-keys he selected one 
and rapidly cut into it with small but shrewdly bit¬ 
ing files until he had produced a thing which an¬ 
swered to its pattern—a key that would, at need, give 
him access to the room next door. Yet that work 
seemed prefatory, and even while it engaged him, his 
thoughts were running ahead to more complicated 
matters. 

He next selected and scrutinized carefully a strand 
of thin platinum wire which, in the hot breath of an 
acetylene blow-pipe, he proceeded to heat and cool 
experimentally to various temperatures variously 
tested. 

Sitting at a table which he had swept clear, he 
conducted these investigations for a time and then 
passed to a new phase. Covering sheets of writing 
paper with patches of carefully stamped sealing-wax 
he waited only until they had cooled and hardened 
before he began, with an uncanny skill, cutting them 


208 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


away from their foundations. This he achieved 
with the platinum wire heated to just that point that 
carried its edge through the locally softened sub¬ 
stance without melting its impressed surface to 
disfigurement or scorching the paper. When he had 
satisfied himself of his ability in that delicate respect, 
Fogarty reheated the under surfaces of the removed 
medallions and replaced them. One would have 
had to study the results very suspiciously and closely 
at the end of his operation to have determined that 
any one of these wax impressions had been tampered 
with after its first placing. 

But the experimenter worked long and patiently. 
This was all only rehearsal, and when the actual 
operation, for which he was making ready, came to 
performance, he could not afford any chance of 
failure. 

Don Fogarty meant to pick the pocket of Mr. 
Mandelle of the envelope which he appeared to guard 
so carefully, to open it and make a copy of its con¬ 
tents, then to reseal and restore it in such time and 
manner that its loss should not be discovered—or if 
discovered, should seem accidental. 

An opportunity to carry out the plan for which he 
was now equipping himself might come to-morrow or 
it might not present itself for days, but Fogarty was 
drilling himself in preparation for a prompt seizure of 
the moment. He sat for a long while thinking out a 
minutiae of detail not only for accomplishing the 


209 


ALIAS RED RYAN 

I 

thing itself but for building up such a structure of 
surrounding circumstance as would best suit his need 
and purpose. 

In a crowded place the actual purloining could be 
most easily accomplished, but there were objections 
to that. If it could be made to appear that Man- 
delle had dropped his treasured envelope about the 
hotel, and if it could be promptly restored to him by a 
bellboy or an unsuspecting guest, he would be less 
stirred with suspicion. In such case he would al¬ 
most undoubtedly carry it at once to his room, and 
tear it open to look to its contents. Impulse would 
lead him to that course without first going into a 
microscopic examination of the outside covering— 
and once the inside matter had been found intact the 
covering would be forgotten. Then the paper would 
go into a fresh envelope and the incident would, for 
the time, be closed. 

Mandelle’s policy of carrying a document of such 
evidently secret character about in his pocket in all 
his goings and comings, instead of leaving it in the 
office safe as he had done when he had gone north, 
was in itself significant. That he did so carry it on 
his person Fogarty felt sure because of the instinctive 
gesture with which, in abstracted moments, the 
lawyer sometimes let his right hand wander to that 
pocket as if to reassure himself that something was 
still safe there. The reason must be that whatever 
the envelope contained had its focus of importance 


210 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


here in Camden, rather than elsewhere, and it was 
here in Camden that Mandelle wished to have it 
always and instantly available for whatever use he 
meant to make of it. 

Fogarty had noticed that when Mandelle went 
into the general washroom on the ground floor he 
never took off his coat to wash his hands, but satis¬ 
fied himself with drawing up its sleeves. That was a 
habit attributable to a caution which did not trust 
the pocket and its contents even so far away as a 
clothes peg. These small matters Fogarty carefully 
considered, and decided that the envelope, when he 
had obtained it and finished with it, should be found 
lying on the floor of that room, and restored under 
circumstances that were least calculated to inflame 
suspicion. 

On the next day, just before luncheon, Fogarty 
met Mandelle standing in a small group in the front 
veranda of the hotel, and if his preparations had been 
tediously painstaking the first step of his actual work 
was admirably expeditious. 

Coming up the stairs he stumbled, caught himself 
and passed on with an apology for his awkwardness, 
but it had been an artfully calculated awkwardness 
and one covering a consummately deft performance. 
Into the unseen activity of a moment went the train¬ 
ing of dangerous years and the man who had seemed 
to stub a clumsy toe went into the door possessed of 
the envelope which he had decided by “hunch” and 


ALIAS RED RYAN 211 

deduction held the key to those mysteries he was 
bent on solving. 

From the stair head, as he made his way to his 
room, he saw Mandelle enter the main hall, laughing 
with his chance companions, and stroll back toward 
the washroom door for his daily visit to the shoe¬ 
polishing stand. Whatever he might discover later, 
Mandelle was as yet untroubled by any alarm, and 
two minutes later Fogarty was working in his own 
room on a business in which every moment counted. 

While his steady and educated hand went about 
its infinitely delicate work, Fogarty’s ear remained 
acutely attentive. Any discovery of his loss would 
undoubtedly send the lawyer scurrying to his room 
to search all his pockets with frantic exhaustiveness. 
The absence of such sounds indicated that he had 
gone untroubled to his luncheon, and gave the busy 
workman an interval of fair safety. 

The seals were expeditiously and successfully re¬ 
moved, the envelope was steamed, and out of it Don 
Fogarty drew a typewritten sheet of paper with one 
corner torn away. 

But as he read it his brows drew into furrows, first 
of complete mystification, then of grim and sphinx- 
like hardness. He had found something here for 
which he was unprepared, and as the revelations of 
that paper unfolded themselves, he acknowledged a 
sickening disappointment gradually rising and over¬ 
flowing a sense of incredulity. Before him, in the 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


212 

form of a signed confession that was seemingly 
categorical and indisputable, lay the statement that 
with the men who had murdered Tom Shell, Barbour 
Sevens had acted as an accessory before the fact. 

Fogarty felt as if, in following bloodhounds upon 
the supposed trail of an enemy, he had been led 
instead to an unsuspected friend. 

But his liking for Sevens was only a collateral ele¬ 
ment of his present and amazed distraction. Faith 
was a member of Sevens’s family, and, though he 
knew that for various reasons he must renounce 
Faith, he could not escape the realization that this 
thing brought her into the shadow of a tragedy which 
she in nowise deserved. 

But his time was short. At any moment Man- 
delle might raise his own hue and cry, and before 
that happened there was much to be done in which 
considerations of friendship or even of love could 
have no recognition. Fogarty’s present work was 
cut to a prearranged pattern and must not be side¬ 
tracked even if he found himself unexpectedly sick¬ 
ened by ugly discoveries along the way. 

Before him on the table lay the confession in terms 
of bold assertiveness and attested by a signature, and 
while the pencil with which he was copying it down, 
word for word and comma for comma, raced, he 
steadied himself against impulses of repugnance. 

He sealed the envelope again when that was done, 
replaced the wax medallions, and studied, with 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


213 


critical severity, the results of liis handiwork. The 
thing not only passed muster, it defied any dis¬ 
covery of having been tampered with short of a 
microscopic survey. Yet in Fogarty’s own pocket 
reposed a true copy and in his mind dwelt unwelcome 
information. Later he must have the paper itself, 
but now a greater danger lay in keeping it than in 
restoring it, because the presently vital need was to 
allay suspicion in the mind of Mr. Mandelle, of 
whose affairs he had yet other things to learn. Upon 
the envelope Mandelle had inscribed his name and 
room number, but it bore no other marking. 

Fogarty put away the tools of his craftsmanship, 
and went down to the lower floor, pausing to glance 
into the dining room and assure himself that Mandelle 
still sat unconcernedly at table, before he hurried 
into the wash-room, took off his coat, and washed his 
hands. The place was empty except for a guest who 
was having his riding-boots rubbed down with har¬ 
ness soap and the Negro boy who was polishing them. 

While Fogarty wiped his wrists with the towel he 
nodded casually to the coloured boy. 

“Jake,” he said, “isn’t that a letter lying over 
there in the corner—by the radiator?” 

The Negro straightened up from his polishing and 
went over. He picked up the envelope and read 
aloud, “‘Joseph Mandelle, Esquire.’ I reckon he 
must have dropped it just now when he washed his 
hands.” 


214 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“You’d better send it upstairs,” suggested Fo¬ 
garty, as he drew on his coat. “I saw him in the 
dining room a few minutes ago. I guess he’s still 
there.” 

Five minutes later, as Fogarty sat at his own table, 
he saw a coloured boy approach Mandelle and hand 
him the envelope with a few words of evident expla¬ 
nation. He saw Mandelle start violently and cast 
about the dining room a glance of nervous appre¬ 
hension. It did not escape Fogarty that the attor¬ 
ney’s eyes went first of all to his own table and that 
the sight of him settled there, as though fully occu¬ 
pied with his food, seemed to bring a reassurance of 
vast relief. Mandelle rose and left the dining room 
at once and, lingering over his own luncheon, Fo¬ 
garty followed him in imagination as he raced up the 
stairs and tore the envelope open in his own room, 
giving way to a luxury of allayed terror as he found 
its contents intact. 

That afternoon Don Fogarty called at Mrs. 
Sangster’s house and asked, not for Faith, but for 
Sevens, and Barbour received him with a sincere 
effort to mask all evidence of his disillusionment 
about this man whom he had liked and who had 
turned out, according to his information, to be a 
crook and a traitor. 

“I want to talk to you confidentially,” said 
Fogarty briefly, and Sevens nodded. He led the way 
to a glassed-in room that had been built as an 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


215 


addition and afterthought upon the rear of the 
house. Separated by the dining room from the 
entrance hall, it was secluded at this hour from the 
body of the building and secure from unannounced 
intrusion. 

Having entered this room, decorated with polo 
trophies and horse-show ribbons, the two men 
paused for a little, Sevens waiting to see what tack 
his visitor would take, and his visitor seemingly 
labouring under an embarrassment which was 
clearly disturbing. 

When Fogarty spoke it was with a vehement 
abruptness. 

“You and I must talk with a pretty naked blunt¬ 
ness, Sevens,” he announced. “And I propose to 
start by telling you my own story. I used to be a 
thief and a damned good one.” 

“Used to be a thief?” echoed Sevens drily, and 
despite his resolution of assumed ignorance he 
stressed the past tense with an ironic significance. 

“Used to be. For some years past I’ve practised 
on the other side of the docket. I’m a detective now, 
and I hope a good one, too. I came here on a rob¬ 
bery and murder trail—which has just led me to you.” 

Sevens, who had remained standing, jerked back 
as if he had been struck, but at once recovered his 
poise and smiled as though in acceptance of a some¬ 
what obscure jest. Because he had nerved himself to 
face surprises he was able to sustain unflinchingly 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


216 

the direct gaze that bored into him from the eyes of 
his accuser, but an unconfessed sense of disaster 
assailed him and bit deep into his morale. 

He reasoned vaguely that this was a natural, even 
a somewhat obvious, attitude for a spy of thieves to 
assume. It enabled the pretender to investigate or 
even accuse, if need be, while maintaining a pretense 
of justifiable motive. Certainly it should be met and 
dealt with in a vein of amused contempt and non¬ 
committal caution. 

“I suppose,” he began smilingly, “that trails are 
interesting to both thieves and detectives. I don’t 
happen to be either, but you tell me you are both, 
and you say you mean to tell your own Jekyll and 
Hyde story-” 

“I’m going to begin that way,” Don Fogarty re¬ 
affirmed. “But I’m going to end by telling you 
yours—and you’ll be surprised to learn how much of 
it I know.” 

Sevens laughed, but it was without any true im¬ 
pulse of heartiness and without any markedly suc¬ 
cessful simulation of mirth. 

“I started out as a thief when I was a child,” 
announced the other quietly. “I was gay-cat, yegg, 
and sneak thief, and finally attained the higher alti¬ 
tudes of crookdom—and became an artist. As I 
look back on my beginnings, they seem to have been 
determined by influences almost as inescapable as 
the flood and ebb of the tides.” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


217 


“You take a fatalistic view of ethics, then?’’ 

Sevens had lighted a cigar and settled back in a 
chair because that seemed to him to demonstrate the 
unconcern which he was seeking to counterfeit. 

“Perhaps. At all events, I don’t feel that I drifted 
on the youthful tide of criminality out of any in¬ 
herent depravity, and I don’t feel sanctimonious 
because I reformed.” 

He paused with a thoughtful clouding of his eyes 
and his companion prompted him, “Why did you 
reform?” 

“Because it came to me as I matured that no 
thief can hope to keep permanently out of prison. 
If I’d been clever enough to do it so far, it indicated 
that my mind was good enough to serve a better and 
less hazardous use. If, as a boy, I had outwitted the 
police, I ought to be able, as a man, to succeed at 
something that wasn’t a fool’s business. You’ve 
seen damage-suit lawyers who have become the 
scourges of railway companies until, to be rid of their 
attacks, those companies have made corporation 
counsel of them. My chance came along the same 
lines. The police respected my abilities and the 
opportunity came to use what talents I had on the 
safer side of the docket. I accepted it.” 

“And became a detective?” 

Fogarty nodded gravely, choosing to ignore the 
sarcastic bite of incredulity. 

“My first moniker in crookdom was Red Ryan, 


218 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


because I had carroty hair,” he said. “As I grew 
a little older that hair got duller and sandier and so 
I outgrew the name. Along with it, I outgrew other 
things as well—such as being content with illiteracy. 
At first I wanted to be a smooth guy, and when I’d 
cultivated the front and manner of a ‘gentleman 
crook* I found I had a kind of hankering for some¬ 
thing more substantial than the shell. Perhaps the 
use of the counterfeit stimulates a taste for the 
genuine—but we aren’t here to moralize, are we?” 

“I wonder what we are here for,” observed Sevens. 

“I’m here to tell you my story and yours,” Fogarty 
made prompt response, “and perhaps to do more 
than talk.” 

*• 

He paused, then continued irrelevantly: “ There’s 

always been a quirk about me though, that perhaps 
sets me apart from the general run of sleuths. You 
remember your ‘Three Musketeers,’ I dare say?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you recall that when Aramis was a guards¬ 
man, he always hungered for the more spiritual life 
of priesthood—but when he took orders the old life 
called him back again. It was so with me. When 
I was preying on society I couldn’t get over a sort of 
unreasonable sympathy for my victims.” He paused 
and smiled. 

“I had the name, as a young crook, of beingTthe 
devil of a fellow who started out to plunder people 
and ended up by serving them—but that was an 



ALIAS RED RYAN 219 

injustice. I was a sincere worker and I got my 
share.” 

“That philanthropic bent was a unique character¬ 
istic—for a thief.” 

“Yes, wasn’t it? The point is that now, when I’m 
a detective, the same rule holds. I sometimes sympa¬ 
thize with the men I start out to jail. I know that 
the law sometimes persecutes, and I don’t like to be 
a part of any persecution. If I think an unfortunate 
is being ‘framed’ I find myself becoming his partisan. 
I suppose it’s the old Aramis quality of feeling senti¬ 
mental about the life that’s no longer one’s own.” 

“That’s a very interesting story, and an extraor¬ 
dinary one.” Sevens paid tribute as the narrator 
paused and gazed meditatively out of the window, 
but the slow-moving deliberation of talk was tortur¬ 
ing him, and his next words betrayed something of 
that suspense. “Yet I don’t quite see . . . 

where it touches me.” 

“You’d say,” went on Fogarty as though he had 
not heard the interruption, while his eyes narrowed 
and darkened, “that a man of my experience ought 
to be proof against surprise—yet I was stunned to¬ 
day in a way that I haven’t gotten over—when I 
learned—that you were an accessory to the robbery 
which led to Tom Shell’s murder.” 

So it was out. That was what a thief-spy, posing 
as a law officer, would say, and yet expectation failed 
to discount the accusation or soften its shock. 


220 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Barbour Sevens came to his feet and his face paled 
and tightened with an emotion which might have 
been either fright or rage, and which was probably 
compounded of both. His hands knotted themselves 
into fists and he towered a half-head over the shorter 
and slighter man whom he seemed on the verge of 
assaulting. Fogarty met his blaze of wrath and 
storm-cloud of threatening truculence without change 
of expression or the movement of a muscle. He stood 
close and face to face, waiting. 

“That’s a lie,” declared Sevens in a low-pitched 
vibrance of fury. “Your whole story is a lie, except 
its boast of past performances in crime. You aren’t 
a detective at all. You’re an emissary from the 
thieves that killed Shell—and you’re trying to in¬ 
volve me.” 

“We’re wasting time that could be better spent, 
Sevens,” answered the other in an unflurried but 
chilled evenness. “Whether I’m a detective or not 
is a matter I can prove promptly and without argu¬ 
ment. I have the power of arrest and I have proof 
enough to warrant taking you to New York. If 
I’ve come to talk with you alone first, it’s because I’m 
friendlier than I have to be. It’s because, in spite of 
all I’ve learned about the Shell case, I can’t help 
feeling that even guiltier men are trying to use and 
abuse you as a shield for themselves.” 

“I’ve heard that third-degree workers usually take 
that tack,” retorted Barbour angrily. “ They always 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


221 


pretend they want someone else more than the man 
they talk to. Well, third-degree methods fail with 
me because I have nothing to tell.” 

“Hell itself couldn’t stop me from doing what I’ve 
got to do,” went on Fogarty in cold steadiness, “and 
I advise you to delay your denials until you hear the 
exact charge I’m making. I can’t hit you from the 
dark. I believe I’m a fair judge of men—and to that 
extent I play my hunches. I have a hunch now, 
that, at heart, you’re decent, and insofar as I can do 
it without treason to my job, I want to help you.” 

“I don’t need your help,” stormed Sevens with a 
bold-sounding but weak-hearted bravado. “And I 
wouldn’t accept it. This accusation is pure slander 
and I ought to throw you bodily out of the house.” 

Before the inexorable and quiet force of the face 
that looked into his own Barbour felt abruptly 
shamed at his own bluster as Fogarty responded 
soberly, “Before you do that, perhaps you’d better 
let me read you a memorandum that I have here in 
my pocket.” 

While Sevens stood breathing excitedly but silent 
the other man drew several sheets of hotel note-paper 
from his pocket and unfolded them. 

“This is naturally only a copy that I have brought 
with me,” he said. “But the original isn’t far away. 
The first sentence or two is torn from the paper but 
the important part, including date and signature, is 
left.” 


222 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


He paused, and Barbour braced himself against a 
nauseating sweep of premonition, and it was a fore¬ 
boding which the first half-dozen words solidified out 
of fear into certainty. As Fogarty read on, sentence 
after sentence, to the end of the memorandum; as, at 
the end, he read the acknowledgment and the signa¬ 
ture, Sevens stood like a groggy prize-fighter who is 
kept on his feet only by the doggedness of instinct 
after his eyes have gone blind with dizziness. 

“But Shell understood that thing . . . and he 

destroyed it,” he heard himself making weak and 
stupefied assertion when the reading was ended. 
“We found the torn scraps!” 

“Does it read as if it had been destroyed?” 

Barbour dropped into a chair and covered his face 
with both hands. His voice was flat in the toneless¬ 
ness of despair. 

“It s no good to try to explain to you that I went 
into the business at Shell’s insistence—to trap the 
thieves . . . that Shell thoroughly understood 

it all and approved it all, and that if he were alive it 
would be easy to prove.” 

“Why isn’t it any good to try?” inquired Fogarty 
quietly. “Haven’t I said I wanted to help you so far 
as I could? Can’t any one else give the testimony 
that Shell would give?” 

“One other,” came the slow answer. 

“Why haven’t you stated that, then, and called 
on him to corroborate you? ” 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


223 


“I was advised not to—by that other person* 
He’s my lawyer.” 

“Is that lawyer Joe Mandelle?” 

Sevens looked up with a startled expression, then, 
as if pulling himself out of a coma, he answered 
doggedly: “That’s all I’m going to say to you. I’ve 

already talked too much.” 

Fogarty nodded. 

“Because until to-day,” he declared in an even 
slower tempo of speech, “I had not remotely sus¬ 
pected you. I came here to shadow Mandelle, whom 
I did suspect as a partner of these criminals. If you 
are leaning on Mandelle for God’s sake break away. 
Mandelle is trying to frame you. Mandelle will 
never swear to your story in any court. He’ll re¬ 
pudiate you, because he’s one of the gang himself.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


B ARBOUR SEVENS turned his head and saw 
Mr. Sangster standing in the stable lot with 
his hands in his breeches pockets supervising 
the clipping of a chestnut polo pony, and the quiet 
proceeding seemed a keyhole glimpse of a remotely 
serene world. His own life was a chaotic thing rock¬ 
ing and smoking under destructive powers of turmoil. 
He had tried the refuges of silence and denial, and 
they had been as ineffective as gauze screens against 
artillery. He had, until to-day, anchored his confi¬ 
dence to the seeming proof of the destruction of a 
paper which had never been destroyed. Fogarty 
had, within the past twenty-four hours, not only read 
and copied that paper, but he said that the original 
was close at hand—presumably in his own posses¬ 
sion. 

Fogarty said, too, that Mandelle was betraying 
him; that Mandelle w^as suspected of complicity with 
the thieves. If he could not trust Mandelle, in whose 
hands he had wholly placed himself, whom could he 
trust? And if he could trust no one, what hope lay 
anywhere? 

“Mandelle is foxing you, Sevens/’ he heard the 

224 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


225 


other man insisting earnestly. “No decent lawyer 
would advise a client to suppress a truth that could 
be justifiably explained, and that would help to clear 
up a murder puzzle. It’s as indefensible as for a 
doctor to give poison to a suffering patient.’* 

“You warn me against Mandelle,” broke out Bar¬ 
bour in a fever of bewilderment, “and Mandelle 
warns me against you. Mandelle’s a lawyer in good 
standing, whom I’ve known for years. You tell me 
yourself that you’ve been a thief—and both of you 
seem to find me easy prey.” 

“You’re such easy prey that I, for one, can’t prey 
on you,” replied Fogarty gravely. “And so, in spite 
of what looks like an open-and-shut confession of 
guilt, I can’t see you as a criminal. The assumption 
doesn’t suit you any more appropriately than pink 
tights would suit a bishop. I’m playing my hunch— 
and that hunch tells me Mandelle is guilty and wants 
to make you pay his freight.” 

He paused, then questioned earnestly: “You say 
you signed that statement in the form of a confession, 
but that Shell knew your intentions were straight. 
Do you care to explain that assertion more fully?” 

Sevens stood irresolute, wavering between his 
previously fixed state of mind and the new but grow¬ 
ing impulse of repudiation for Mandelle and all of 
Mandelle’s works. After a long silence he put a 
strange interrogation and he put it with level-eyed 
directness. “Ought I—a technical suspect—to an- 


226 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


swer any questions asked by you—an avowed agent 
of the prosecution ?” 

The answer came with convincing candour. 

“Technically you ought not, but you’re not the 
usual sort of suspect and I’m not the usual sort of 
detective. If I were in your place I’d throw that 
caution away and trust an honest adversary before 
a Judas friend. If you’re guilty, I’m going after 
you. If you’re innocent, I’m your friend, and I want 
to believe you’re innocent.” 

He paused, then added, though without the offen¬ 
sive seeming of threat: 

“You know that all these questions can be put to 
you and put less considerately if I have to take you 
North with bracelets on your wrists. ” 

There was an inescapable declaration of honesty, 
clean and uncompromising as a surgeon’s scalpel, in 
the eyes of the speaker, and Sevens felt it. 

This man might, as he had confessed, have to play 
his part as the law’s unrelenting probe, but he would 
at least play it without trickery. 

Barbour nodded. He told, somewhat brokenly 
in his unbalance of excitement, of his quarrel with 
his employer about money to bring Hope South; 
about meeting the ambassador of the thieves and of 
his foolishly signing the statement to demonstrate 
to Shell what his motives had been, and as he talked 
the darkened eyes of his listener lightened into a 
clearer blue. But Sevens had, out of lingering cau- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


227 


tion, said nothing of Mandelle’s counsel of silence. 
When he finished, Fogarty sat for a few minutes 
meditatively quiet. Then he spoke slowly. 

“That’s just the sort of improbable story that 
most jurors would sweep aside as a crippled and 
stupid defense yarn and—” he paused then added in 
a changed tone— “and it’s just the way'a thing might 
work out in actual life. It’s just the sort of story I’m 
ready to believe.” 

He rose and for a few minutes stood looking out 
at the quiet proceedings in the stable lot, then he 
turned. 

“Sevens,” he said, “I put more faith in my judg¬ 
ment of men than I do in circumstantial evidence. 
You don’t strike me as a man who trafficks in felony— 
but it’s going to be almost impossible to prove your 
innocence—almost impossible but not quite. I 
represent the prosecution and I’m loyal to it, but 
I’m not just out to bag a scapegoat. I’m here to 
take back my man—but I want it to be the right 
man.” 

“I still have one witness,” urged Sevens, weakly 
grasping after a hold on confidence. “Mandelle was 
there when Shell explained what I was undertaking 
and why.” 

Fogarty wheeled and his eyes blazed. 

“Forget that fool hope!” he exclaimed. “Man¬ 
delle will throw you overboard. Mandelle will 
swear that he knows nothing whatever about it.” 



228 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


He broke off as if he had said too much, then laughed 
shortly and went on to say even more: 

“The usual detective wouldn’t tell you this—but 
I’m still playing my hunch. You said that con¬ 
fession had been torn up. Who told you so? Was 
it Mandelle?’’ 

“We searched for it together,” replied Sevens. 
“It was Mandelle who helped me move the desk on 
the morning after the murder.” 

“I thought so,” declared the detective grimly. 
“Well, at noon to-day I picked Mandelle’s pocket— 
and what I got was that confession. He carries it 
around with him while he tells you it doesn’t exist. 
Now do you still pin your faith to Mandelle?” 

“Mandelle knew it hadn’t been destroyed? Man¬ 
delle had it?” 

Barbour’s eyes widened in amazement and he 
flinched back as though a flying timber had struck 
and stunned him. For a moment his reason seemed 
to be visibly crumpling like walls going down in an 
earthquake. Then slowly he recovered himself in 
some degree, and a new sort of fire burned in his eyes. 
He moistened his lips and spoke with a low hoarse¬ 
ness. “Don’t deceive me about this, Fogarty, be¬ 
cause if that’s true, I’m going to kill Mandelle.” 
He broke off, and the voice filled with a volume of 
swelling fury. “If Mandelle kept me silent to 
victimize me—then nothing can save me. He’s my 
one living witness. Without his evidence I’ll be 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


229 


convicted—and it will kill my wife!” The breath 
caught gaspingly in his throat, and his next words 
seemed spat out like a hemorrhage of the wounded 
mind. “Before that happens I’m going to have one 
satisfaction: I’m going to wring the life out of 
Mandelle with my own hands as you’d wring dirty 
water out of a dirty rag.” 

Fogarty shook his head while he laid a steadying 
hand on the trembling shoulder. “You aren’t even 
going to let Mandelle dream that you suspect him,” 
he commanded sharply. “We’ll get the truth out 
of him in a better way and one that will do more good. 
But you must follow my advice now for a while. 
Tell me every detail of Mandelle’s connection with 
you and with the case.” 

With no remaining vestige of hesitation Barbour 
went over the story with a whole completeness, and 
when he had finished it he answered many questions 
whose relevancy he could not fully understand. 

“From what you tell me,” announced Fogarty at 
length, “I believe that after your first talk, at your 
apartment, Mandelle tipped off this fellow whom you 
met on the street the next night and advised him to 
approach you. I believe that after your consultation 
in Shell’s office Mandelle gave information to the 
thieves that you weren’t ‘coming through.’ I be¬ 
lieve that in that short interval between his getting 
to your office on the day after the murder and your 
own arrival there he found and pocketed the con- 


230 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


fession, I’m willing to gamble that he planted the 
torn scraps to disarm your suspicion and keep you 
quiet. He could have had only one motive for 
silencing you—to keep out of Court himself/’ 

“ Then the only thing for me to do now is to make a 
clean breast of the whole thing to the District At¬ 
torney and take my chances—if I still have any 
chance.” 

But Fogarty shook his head. 

“No. That’s what you should have done at first— 
but not now. It’s both too late and too early for 
that course. Your long silence would discredit any 
tardy statement—until such time as we can trap 
Mandelle and wring the truth out of him. So far 
we have no hold on him—and it’s going to be the 
devil’s own work getting one.” 

Sevens stood like a man may fronting a firing 
squad. 

“I owe you an apology,” he said with the stiffness 
of strangled emotion. “I am in your hands. Issue 
your orders.” 

“I want your parole to hold yourself subject to 
call,” replied the other. “As for apologies—forget 
them.” 

In the awkwardness of men, who shied away from 
sentimental utterances, an understanding established 
itself in instinctive trust. 

Barbour Sevens stood staring, with a strained 
fixedness, into space out of eyes that seemed to see 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


231 


only pictures of nightmare grimness and shadow, 
but his thoughts were, just now, not of himself. 

His own prison prospect and probable disgrace 
were secondary to the premonition of what life held 
for Hope. She was just entering on what seemed a 
winning fight, and buoyant health would come back 
to her if her chances were not blighted by intolerable 
complications. Assaults of unbearable anxiety would 
crush her mortally and break down every defense. 
Nothing could hold her away from him when they 
took him back to try and convict him—and as they 
wound around him the meshes of the net that would 
be woven with the deftness of spiders but with the 
strength of Vulcans, Hope would receive her own 
death sentence. 

“It will kill Hope. . . he whispered. “And 

that’s what Mandelle counselled!” 

Fogarty’s rough-hewn face looked as if, just then, 
he was finding himself capable of the powers of hating 
which he had said were not in his register of feelings, 
but his only response was an understanding nod. 

Suddenly, though, Barbour seized his forearm with 
a grip that made him wince. 

“But you have that paper now?” he demanded 
almost pleadingly. “You didn’t return it to him?” 

The man who had once been Red Ryan shook his 
head gravely. 

“Eventually,” he said, “I must have that evidence 
in the original. But this time I copied it and re- 


232 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


stored it to him. It was essential that he have no 
suspicion to chew on—just yet.” 

“For God’s sake, get it back—without delay,” 
pleaded Sevens. “Don’t let it rest in his hands 
another day—another hour!” 

Rut again the detective shook his head. “Do 
you suppose I let the thing out of my keeping, once I 
had it there, without due consideration?” he asked. 
“If I were only looking for enough evidence to con¬ 
vict you, I might have stopped where I was—but if 
Mandelle is to be taken in the net, he must be played 
more adroitly—and he mustn’t be warned.” 

Sevens dropped once more into his chair and sat 
in lethargic quiet. 

“This paper gave me my first lead,” Fogarty told 
him soberly. “But it only leads to you and the trail 
must go farther. Somewhere, somehow I must find 
some other tangible thing on which the rest must 
turn. Until I reach that point you and I must re¬ 
main good friends with Mr. Mandelle.” 

He paused, then talked on rapidly. “The man 
you met in Washington Square would seem to be the 
head and front of this conspiracy—but his tracks are 
well covered and your description is no description at 
all. I’m morally convinced that Mandelle’s his 
henchman and Mandelle could lead us to him if he 
would.” Again he broke off, but only to demand 
suddenly: 

“What does Mandelle say about me?” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


233 


“ He says that you are a spy for the thieves, watch¬ 
ing me to observe my attitude and report it to them.” 
Barbour pressed a hand to his hot eyes. “But of 
course that’s only another lie. He doesn’t believe it 
himself. If he’s a member of the gang he must know 
the rest and he could do all the watching without 
help.” 

But Fogarty’s brows suddenly contracted into the 
absorption of mulling over a new idea, and for once 
his voice rang with a note of excitement. 

“And yet that may be precisely what he does 
think—that I’m a spy for the thieves,” he declared 
almost eagerly. “And if he does, it’s an idea that 
may deliver him into my hands.” 

“But why would they have two spies on me?” 

“They haven’t, of course . . . but quite 

possibly they might have one spy watching the other. 
This gang is uneasy. Mandelle may not be fully 
trusted and may feel that he’s under surveil¬ 
lance. ... If so he’d want to discount my 
possible influence over you and the ground he took 
with you would be as logical a one as any. He’s not 
likely to be afraid of me as a detective because he 
believes himself safe from the law—but it would both 
gall and frighten him to be watched by his fellow 
crooks.” 

“ Then you want me to encourage the idea that you 
are a crook spy?” 

“Yes. If I can make sure that Mandelle thinks of 


234 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


me in that guise, I have only to steal that confession 
again and disappear. He will run like a frightened 
rabbit to the chief himself . . . and he might 

be followed.” 

Sevens rose abruptly out of his chair and a gleam 
of hope brightened faintly in his eyes. 

“Can’t you do that at once? Can’t you force him 
to showing the way now as well as later?” 

“Absolutely no. First I must read the next 
sign-board, whatever it is. I must have the Turner 
Bureau in New York do certain things there and send 
me an assistant down here. If I decoy Mandelle 
away, I can’t both lead him and follow him, can I? 
And unless he’s followed what’s the use of making 
him run?” 

“Of course,” assented Barbour dully, “even I 
might have seen that.” 

Fogarty was pacing the floor now and Sevens, 
from his chair, followed the restless figure with eyes 
that seemed unable to break away from their gazing. 

Presently the ex-thief halted before Barbour and 
spoke in a low but imperative voice. “When I give 
you the word, go to Mandelle with every evidence of 
deep agitation. Tell him that I’ve made dark hints, 
disguised as cryptic abstractions, that I know certain 
things about you and that, by indirection, I’ve tried 
to poison your mind against him. Assume to have 
construed it all as confirming his own explanation to 
you as to my purpose in being here.” 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


235 


“But,” demurred Sevens confusedly, “wouldn’t 
he simply assume that it’s me, not himself, you’re 
watching?” 

This time Fogarty jerked his head impatiently. 
Then realizing that his mind was moving along blind 
trails of deduction at a pace his companion could not 
follow, he pulled himself up and explained. 

“No. Don’t you suppose that, if Mandelle is 
guilty, he realizes that any other thief ambassador 
who is here, and who is not working with him, must 
be working against him? Drop the hint as I say and 
let him work it out for himself. He won’t fail to put 
on it the construction I want.” 

From the stable lot appeared Faith crossing the 
garden with a riding-companion, and Fogarty gave 
a quick gesture of warning with his lifted hand as he 
went over and opened the door of the sun room. 

The girl who was coming up the few steps to the 
veranda met his eyes with a level glance, and in a low 
voice she asked, “Are you ready to tell me that the 
allegory was true, Mr. Fogarty?” 

Her eyes were smiling so that, to the man who 
came with her, this question seemed only a reference 
to some previous joke between them, and Fogarty 
smiled, too, but his answer was serious. “No,” he 
told her, “one can’t always underwrite allegories. I 
wish I could.” 

Don Fogarty went to the telegraph office and from 
there direct to his room. The messages that must go 


236 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


by mail and wire to New York were urgent and he 
devoted himself to them with both haste and care. 

When late afternoon brought the truck with the 
day’s consignment of freight and express for the 
hotel, he was standing at the service entrance pre¬ 
tending to fret over a delayed box from the North. 
This was a thing he had been doing of late almost as 
carefully as he watched the distribution of mail, and 
it was a precaution prompted only by a spirit of 
thoroughness. He was watching all channels by 
which Mandelle might receive anything from the 
outside and to-day, for the first time, his vigilance 
brought a result. A somewhat bulky thing was un¬ 
loaded this afternoon addressed to the attorney, and 
Fogarty made out from the tag of the consignor that 
the crate contained a dictating phonograph. 

That discovery gave Fogarty fresh and perplexing 
food for thought. What connection, if any, did this 
machine have with his own inquiries? He remem¬ 
bered, from his one visit to the law office in downtown 
New York, that the attorney used such an instru¬ 
ment for a part of his legal business, but it was a 
machine that recorded dictation on cvlinders which 
must afterward be transcribed. This system pred¬ 
icated the employment of a typist, and presumably 
such dictation would not be apt to partake of an 
ultra-confidential or secret nature. 

Yet any new thing warranted intensive study, the 
more so if at first glance it seemed meaningless, and 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


237 


Fogarty inquired absent-mindedly, as though only 
to make conversation, “When does all this junk get 
delivered?” 

The truckman laughed. 

“Not till to-morrow morning—except the stuff for 
the chef. I expect the folks upstairs ain’t sweating 
for their things unless there’s hootch hid away in 
some of ’em.” 

The inquiring guest grinned and drifted away. 
He was feeling a new hunch, and that hunch told him 
that the slow march of events was about to break into 
a quick-step, and that what he wanted to do must be 
done speedily or not at all. Yet he could take no 
action until the arrival of his assistant, and that ar¬ 
rival could not be before to-morrow afternoon. 

On the next morning Fogarty drifted down to the 
Sangster house at an early hour for another talk with 
Sevens, and on his return to the hotel he met Man- 
delle who, with a party of three others, was starting 
out on an all-day motor trip. Fogarty learned by 
casual means of his own that the phonograph had not 
yet been delivered at the lawyer’s room and, though 
he had as yet no assurance that the instrument bore 
any significance, this news pleased him because it 
gave him more time for study. Late that day 
Jimmy Brice of the Turner Detective Bureau arrived 
and registered at the Palmetto Inn. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


F OGARTY was standing near the desk when 
Brice signed the book and was allotted a 
room, but the two men, whose eyes met with¬ 
out recognition, had no seeming of interest in each 
other and it was not until later, when they met stroll¬ 
ing in the grounds, that they seemed to scrape an 
acquaintance. News came later by telephone that 
the motoring party, including Mandelle, had suf¬ 
fered a breakdown on the road, and would be de¬ 
tained overnight at Bishopville while garage repairs 
were made. So another day came with no develop¬ 
ment except that Fogarty’s reinforcement had ar¬ 
rived on the scene. 

But the morning brought Mandelle back from his 
motor jaunt and Fogarty was coming out of his open 
door as the lawyer entered his room. Mandelle’s 
eyes fell at once on the dictating machine, and 
Fogarty thought a brief flash of pleasure livened in 
them with its discovery. 

From the listening post of his own room the de¬ 
tective noted with what instant promptness his 
neighbour’s voice telephoned to the office for a porter 
to uncrate his package, and the evident annoyance 

238 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


239 


with which he answered whatever the office said in 
reply. “Right after lunch, you say? Yes, I sup¬ 
pose that will have to do, then.” 

Fogarty’s bag was packed, and when he heard 
Mandelle’s door open and close, and heard the key 
turn in the lock and footsteps receding toward the 
stairs, he hurried into the hall with the key that he 
had made himself against just such a need and let 
himself carefully into Mandelle’s apartment. In¬ 
side its door he glanced about and found that, in 
readiness for the use of the newly arrived dictaphone, 
the lawyer had already made certain preparations. 
On the table near the freight package stood a card¬ 
board box, to which Fogarty went at once because 
in its wrappings he recognized the thing which he had 
seen at the post office, coming as registered mail to 
the man he suspected. 

The package end had been broken and the thing 
which had seemingly been inside it now stood on the 
table behind it. It was a phonograph cylinder. 

Fogarty smiled. Communication of some sort had 
been had by a phonograph record instead of by letter. 
Presumably, if it carried any importance, it would be 
in cipher—but the interesting point was that what¬ 
ever it was Mandelle had not yet had an opportunity 
to avail himself of it because, until now, he had had 
no machine. It was not a blank record, for its sur¬ 
face bore the tiny indentations of the diaphragm 
needle, and the indications were that Mandelle was 


£40 ALIAS RED RYAN 

impatient to hear whatever sounds those indentations 
had recorded. 

Fogarty quickly pocketed the thing, secured his 
bag, hat, and coat and passed downstairs. The 
evidence of his intended travel he put out of sight 
but left word at the desk that he was going that 
afternoon into the country and might not return 
for a day or two. 

The thing which was the most important of all 
had yet to be done and its doing was, in itself, diffi¬ 
cult enough to have daunted a less confident spirit. 
When Mandelle came out of the dining room where he 
had lunched, Fogarty engaged him briefly and 
casually in conversation, then he turned away—but 
once out of sight he hurried. 

Mandelle, on the other hand, answered to a mood 
of deliberate ease and smoked a cigar on the veranda. 
He had left instructions that when the porter could 
uncrate his box, he was to be called, and until then 
he could indulge himself in leisure. It was an hour 
later when he went to his room, accompanied by a 
man with hatchet and chisels—but once inside his 
mildly pleasant humour of well-being was stricken 
abruptly into consternation. He discovered at once 
that his phonograph record had been stolen. For an 
instant he stood with the drawn and pallid face of one 
utterly confounded, then because the porter was 
there to witness his agitation, he sought to cover it 
up, but the hand that went instinctively to his breast 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


241 


pocket was violently tremulous. The sense of touch 
carried a second shock to his nerves that mounted 
like the rise of a climax and topped the realization 
of disaster which had just come through his eyes. 

The envelope which should have been safely re¬ 
posing there was also gone. 

The place seemed suddenly to spin around him. 
Panic seized on Joseph Mandelle and shook him pro¬ 
foundly, but he held grimly to some instinct of self- 
control and when the telephone rang violently he 
moved automatically over and took down the re¬ 
ceiver. It was the voice of Barbour Sevens that 
accosted him, and its tone was electric with excite¬ 
ment. “I’ve got to talk to you—at once. Immedi¬ 
ately, do you understand? Will you come here or 
shall I go there ?” 

“I can’t talk to you now,” Mandelle barked into 
the ’phone. '‘I’m busy.” 

“You must talk now,” insisted the other. “I tell 
you it won’t wait. It’s got to be now . . . right 

now!” 

Through the consternation that was demoralizing 
Mandelle’s brain came a realization which briefly 
steadied him. Barbour Sevens was as excited as 
himself. In every likelihood his message might bear 
on a common cause of alarm. Yes, he must talk to 
Sevens, and he called more composedly into the 
transmitter, “All right. Come here, then. I can’t 
leave now.” 


242 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


After that he wheeled from the *phone. 

“Get the hell out of here,” he stormed churlishly 
at the workman. “I’ll finish that job myself—- 
later.” 

While he stood alone in the bedroom from which 
the porter had just gone, Mandelle was trying desper¬ 
ately to pull himself together and take stock of his 
situation. He could feel the blood hammering 
crazily in his temples and the jumpy excitement of 
his heart, and he knew that he was on the brink of 
such a collapse as might ruin him. From a pocket 
flask he gulped down successive swallows of brandy; 
and as its warmth stole into his veins his senses 
seemed to draw once more out of blurred confusion 
into something resembling focus. 

His room had been broken into and robbed. His 
pocket had been picked and not a doubt existed as 
to the identity of the thief who had despoiled him of 
both treasures. Yet as he hurriedly took appraisal 
of the place he knew that only two things had been 
stolen, an envelope and a dictaphone cylinder—and 
as it happened he could make no accusation, sound 
no alarm, because he dared not admit that either of 
these things had been in his own possession or had, 
for him, any unusual value. He had not the te¬ 
merity to describe or identify for recovery either 
purloined article. 

Hurriedly he went again to the ’phone and called 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


243 


the office. His voice, held steady under a strain of 
concentrated effort, came near breaking as he talked. 
“I want to speak to Mr. Fogarty at once,” he said. 
“Is he in the hotel?” 

“Mr. Fogarty,” replied the office blandly, “has 
just left. He said he was going into the country for 
a day or two. He didn’t say where.” 

That was what Mandelle had expected. It was 
what fear had prophesied. He had only acted on the 
precaution of confirming his supposition by inquiry. 
He swallowed, gulping down the strictured knot that 
he felt in his throat, and again his voice came with 
seeming calmness: 

“Thank you. When Mr. Sevens arrives, please 
send him up.” 

Sevens came almost at once, and Mandelle realized 
that with this man, too, he must continue to wear 
the mask of outward composure—indeed, with this 
man above all others; and already he was violently 
regretting the betrayal of emotion and excitement 
that must have carried over the telephone wires to 
Barbour’s listening ears. 

“I’m sorry if I sounded short when you rang me, 
Sevens,” he began as he closed his door on his visi¬ 
tor. “But I’d been trying to get a long-distance 
call through and there were all sorts of irritating 
delays.” 

Mandelle was fretting to have done with this talk 
and be free for the more vital concerns. His major 



244 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


agitation he had partially mastered, but a waspish 
irascibility remained which he had not controlled. 

“What’s up, Sevens? ” he snapped. “ Why did you 
have to talk to me in such a devilish swivet of haste?” 

“Because Fogarty’s been haranguing me,” asserted 
Barbour excitedly. “He talked to me in riddles. . . 
He intimated that I was being watched . . . 

and for good reason . . . and yet he did it with 

such damned cleverness that everything he said 
might seem innocent enough if repeated. He said 
you’d bear watching, by the way.” 

Mandelle forced a laugh, but it was dry-lipped and 
strained. 

“He doesn’t care for me because I’m a lawyer and 
he’s a crook,” he said shortly. “There’s nothing 
remarkable about that.” 

“Don’t try to choke me off,” Barbour’s voice 
flared out with a sting of hot temper. “This is 
serious. I’m not a child to be hushed up. I want 
your attention.” 

For several minutes Sevens talked, and because he 
had been well rehearsed, he talked with effect and 
the seeming of overwrought agitation. As he 
listened, Mandelle’s inward fears stiffened and his 
inner indignation smouldered white-hot, for the seed 
that Fogarty had meant to plant was growing with 
tropical swiftness and rankness, to the bearing of 
bitter and poisonous fruit. In Fogarty he saw now 
with definite terror the watchman for the chief who 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


245 


was seeking to get into his own hands all the evidence 
that might have value to coerce others. 

When Barbour had ended his narrative, he de¬ 
manded excitedly, “Will you talk to Fogarty and 
find out what he’s driving at?” 

“I just called Fogarty on the ’phone,” answered 
Mandelle brusquely. “He’s left Camden.” 

“Great God!” exclaimed Sevens with unbalanced 
vehemence. “At any time they choose to speak, my 
silence—the silence that you advised—will convict 
me of crime. You are responsible for that.” 

“Keep hold of yourself, Sevens,” exhorted the 
attorney sharply. “They are trying to frighten 
you, that’s all, but since they counsel silence and 
silence is what we’ve decided on, there’s nothing to 
fear.” He broke off, then added quickly, because he, 
too, must be on his journey of investigation, “I 
must run on to New York to-night—and there’s 
hardly time to get packed. I’ve got to take de¬ 
positions there—but I’ll be back here in a day or 
two.” 

“So you’re going to abandon me, are you?” The 
words came in a terror-stricken gasp, and the lawyer 
shook his head irritably. 

“No, I’m not going to abandon you—don’t be 
so confoundedly hysterical. You’re safe so long as 
you keep your mouth shut. I told you I wouldn’t 
be gone long.” 

Barbour Sevens pulled himself together and rose 




246 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


from his chair, but his dull movements were those of 
an old and decrepit man. His seeming of despair 
was something of a credit to his newly assumed role as 
an actor. Absently he fumbled for and picked up his 
hat from the table and went unsteadily out without 
a word, but beyond the threshold his agitation left 
him and when he appeared in the hall below he no 
longer presented the aspect of a harried or panic- 
ridden man. 

Jimmy Brice, in flannel trousers and norfolk 
jacket, lounged on the veranda stairs as Barbour 
emerged from the door and a few words passed 
between them. The man whom the Turner Bureau 
had sent to South Carolina, on the call from Fogarty, 
was a blond youth with a face of seeming vacuous¬ 
ness. He moved indolently and smoked incessantly, 
lighting one cigarette from the fag of another. 

Upstairs Mandelle was packing with a frenzy of 
haste. The virus with which Sevens had inocu¬ 
lated him had already wakened a fever in his brain. 
His suspicions were building fast into a structure of 
conviction which he was no longer questioning. The 
man who had robbed him had done the thing which 
the chief of the robbery syndicate had ordered. That 
note of disapproval and distrust which had sounded 
through the Louisville interview had evidently grown 
into an ugly policy of unfaith which might end in 
disaster. Cowes had sent a pickpocket spy to get 
the confession which Mandelle had declined to sur- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


247 


render without compulsion, and one course only was 
left open to him. He must go to Cowes and have 
it out. Code telegrams and cipher letters were no 
longer to be trusted—and what understanding could 
be arrived at could only be attained in a face-to-face 
interview. Cowes could hardly afford to break 
violently with him. He would pretend ignorance of 
the whole matter, but Mandelle hoped to be able to 
beat through that disingenuous defense and have 
the truth. 

It was the train to Columbia which Mandelle took 
and Columbia lies south and not north of Camden. 
A blond and vacuous-faced young man took it, too, 
but during the twenty-four hours that he had been 
here he had succeeded in escaping the notice of Joe 
Mandelle altogether and had Mandelle seen him he 
would not have been greatly interested. 

Don Fogarty had a fair start when, with the fruits 
of his robberies, he left Camden. Certain definite 
things he wished to do, but the first and prime motive 
that actuated him was to give the appearance of flee¬ 
ing to robbery headquarters. Secondary matters 
might be worked on in any one of several places, and 
he had selected Louisville as his objective because 
he wanted to see a man who might be useful to him 
there. Jimmy Brice was to communicate with him 
in Louisville and notify him as to what direction the 
chase had taken and at what pace it went. 


248 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


In the Kentucky town where, as Red Ryan, he had 
in other days been less free to walk unmolested, he 
registered at the Watterson and went promptly over 
to a block in Fifth Street almost in the shadow of the 
old court house. In an office building there he called 
on a court stenographer, Lawrence Footman, who 
among other lines of versatility knew all that was to 
be known of dictaphone uses and mechanisms. 

“Lawrence,” stated Fogarty briefly, when he had 
brushed, as hastily as possible, through the cere¬ 
monies of renewal for a long-lapsed acquaintanceship, 
“I’ve a dictaphone cylinder here and I don’t know 
what’s on it. I’d like to run it on your machine— 
and I want to be alone when I do it.” 

“The machine’s in there. Red—I beg your pardon. 
I mean Don. Shut yourself in and take possession.” 

Inside the small room where the paraphernalia 
of such dictation was scattered, Fogarty found him¬ 
self surrounded by machines, record-shavers, and 
cases of used and unused cylinders. He sat down, 
slipped his record onto the metal core, adjusted the 
ear pieces, and touched the starting button. His 
familiarity with these devices was such that he 
needed no instruction in their use, yet when to his 
ears came the sounds of the machine’s transmission, 
his brow wrinkled and his eyes clouded to perplexity. 
For the second time he listened to the record from 
beginning to end, and then he rose and called Foot-< 
man to his aid. 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


249 


“Lawrence,” he announced, “I have no idea what’s 
recorded here but I have reason to believe that it’s 
important to a case I’m working on. Will you listen 
in and tell me what you make of it?” 

Footman sat down with the confident air of a 
man who was sure that from him this mechanical 
talker could keep no secrets. He listened to a 
meaningless sound-jumble, then pressed the button 
which stopped the motor and wagged his head in 
mystified disappointment. 

“It's all jargon to me,” he announced. “It 
doesn’t sound like anything I ever heard before. I 
don’t believe it’s anything rational.” 

Fogarty stood at his shoulder with a deeply 
thoughtful face. 

“How about running it backward?” he suggested 
hopefully, and the man in the chair shook his head 
with definite repudiation of the idea. 

“It can’t be done,” he answered slowly. “The 
core that the record fits on isn’t a true cylinder. It’s 
a modified cone—smaller at one end than at the 
other. The record only goes on one way.” 

“Could it, by any chance, be an obscure foreign 
language?” 

Footman rubbed his chin dubiously, then sudden¬ 
ly his face lighted. 

“If it is, there’s a man in this building who can 
fit the tag to it,” he announced with assurance. 
“Old Markwitz is one of the most versatile linguists 


250 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


in the country. Law is his profession, but languages 
are his passion. Ancient or modern, they’re his meat, 
and none of them are dead to him. Shall I have him 
down?” 

“If he’ll be so good as to come,” Fogarty gave 
eager assent. 

They had not waited long when the door opened 
and an elderly man of careless dress and strongly 
Semitic features entered. The newcomer wore thick 
glasses and at once Fogarty recognized in him that 
type of recondite scholar who is so often addicted to 
absent-mindedness and eccentricity. Now he stood 
blinking inquiringly with an owlish preoccupation as 
Footman rose and introduced Fogarty. 

“Mr. Markwitz,” said the court stenographer, 
“ we have a problem here for you that looks abstruse 
enough to be interesting.” 

“So?” muttered Markwitz as he continued to 
blink, “So? And what is it?” 

In a few words Footman explained what was 
wanted, and behind their thick lenses the beady 
eyes of the elderly man livened into keen inter¬ 
est. 

Two minutes later he sat with the tubes to his 
ears as the cylinder ran its course from start to 
finish. 

Having done that he set it back once more to its 
beginning and listened as to an absorbing encore, 
while the two men who watched saw his brow corru- 


ALIAS RED RYAN 251 

gate and his features settle into an almost trance-like 
intensity. 

After that he stopped the machine and leaned back, 
staring ahead as though he had forgotten their 
presence, and when he spoke it was mutteringly, as 
if he were talking to himself. 

"It’s not German, French, or Spanish, of course,” 
he mused abstractedly. “It’s not Sanscrit or any 
derivative of Sanscrit. It’s not Arabic or any child of 
Arabic parentage. . . . It’s not Slavic, true or 

bastard. . . .” There was a pause, then again 

the voice addressing itself to space: “It has no 
kinship with Latin or Romance origins. . . . 

It’s certainly not Hellenistic. ... It bears no 
relation to any language source I know . . . 

and yet it’s a language.” 

He paused once more and it was Footman who 
interrupted his thought with a query. 

“Isn’t it a plain gibberish, Mr. Markwitz?” he 
demanded. “Isn’t it pure nonsense spieled on there 
at random?” 

The elderly scholar looked up with a start and his 
eyes flashed as resentfully as though the stenographer 
had broken in on sacred services with a profane 
interruption. 

“Gott, no!” he exclaimed. “It is no gibber¬ 
ish ... I defy you to fool me with any gibber¬ 
ish! I shall at once recognize it.” 

The excitement died out of his voice and he looked 


252 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


earnestly from one to the other; then, with an im¬ 
pressive seriousness, he said: “Gentlemen, this is a 
language. I have no hesitation in making that 
assertion. Moreover, it is not a barbaric language 
. . . or one spoken by a savage people. Gentle¬ 

men, this is a language with a grammar and a litera¬ 
ture!” 

Fogarty bent forward, responsive to the animation 
of the scholar’s enthusiasm, but Footman demanded 
with a calm and irreverent skepticism: 

“How do you get that way, Mr. Markwitz? If 
you can’t recognize the lingo, how can you claim for 
it a grammar and a literature? That’s a large order, 
you know.” 

Markwitz sat wagging his leonine head, and his 
voice came slowly. 

“I know those things because any gibberish— 
even any barbaric system of speech—is crudely 
formed and more or less haphazard. . . . Here 
I find root recurrences and the observed laws of 
stress and motif. Those things argue a developed 
tongue with definite root-structure. . . . This, 
gentlemen, is human speech of long and cultural 
evolution, but beyond that I can tell you nothing.” 

Regretfully Markwitz rose. “I wish I could take 
the thing home with me and study it more closely. 
I’m afraid I have not helped you, after all.” 

“On the contrary, Mr. Markwitz,” contradicted 
Fogarty, “you have helped me. You have satisfied 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


253 


me that this thing is what I suspected: important 
enough to be wrapped in a mystifying code—and no 
code is unbreakable.” 

Markwitz snorted. '‘Cipher codes, young man,” 
he offered reminder, “do not have a grammar and 
literature.” 

The young man was standing gazing out of the 
window and abruptly he turned. “They are based 
on languages, though, that have both,” he rejoined. 

When Fogarty was alone with Footman again he 
inquired, “How long can you let me stay in here and 
experiment? This is the laboratory I want to work 
in for a while if you can spare me its use.” 

“I’m going to be in court all afternoon,” replied 
Footman. “The rest of my force is transcribing— 
so for the present, this place is yours.” 

Don Fogarty closed the door and for half an hour 
sat unmoving with his eyes fixed on the perplexing 
cylinder of wax that had, at once, so stimulated and 
baffled him. It contained some message which, 
without doubt, Mandelle knew how to read, but 
presumably he had not yet read it, because the 
machine which gave it voice had not been unpacked 
in time. It might answer questions of principal 
identities, or it might hold only some minor clue; 
but almost beyond doubt it carried words so secret 
that they had been guarded with clever and extraor¬ 
dinary care. Perhaps it had bearing of a vital 
and illuminating nature upon the murder of Tom 



254 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Shell, but could the key to its translation be found? 

When Footman returned, three hours later, from 
the courtroom where he had been working, he found 
Fogarty just emerging from the inner office. The 
detective’s face was fatigue-worn and, in answer to 
the stenographer’s: “What luck?” he shook his head 
blankly. 

“I’ve put in a hard session—and I’ve got nothing 
yet,” said Fogarty. “Now I’ve got to send tele¬ 
grams and talk to New York over the wire . . . 

but there’s one thing more I want.” 

“What is that? If I’ve got it you can have it.” 

“I want to get a phonograph to take away with 
me—one that I can run that record on—I’ll send it 
back before long.” 

Footman nodded. “I’ve got an old one lying idle 
that will do the trick, and you can pack it in a 
comparatively small bulk. You’re welcome to take 
that.” 

“Can I have a messenger carry it round to my 
hotel now? I’ll stay in town overnight . . . 

and to-morrow I may be in again.” 

That evening Fogarty spent waiting for a word 
from Brice, but no word came. He talked to the 
Turner Bureau, too, over the wire and gave certain 
explicit directions, but except for that he sat in his 
own room tinkering an old-fashioned dictating ma¬ 
chine. 



CHAPTER XIX 


B Y DON FOGARTY’S plate the next morning 
a telegram was laid, and when he had torn 
it open a smile of satisfaction flickered briefly 
in his eyes. The message was succinct and it bore 
the signature and return address of J. Brice. 

“Arrived St. Louis. Have seen both our men. 
Instruct.” 

On the back of an envelope the detective com¬ 
posed his reply. “Keep in close touch and await 
orders.” 

Other telegrams he also sent; and to Barbour 
Sevens, in Camden, he talked over the long-distance 
wire. That conversation, too, was brief, and to any 
listener in it might have seemed void of arresting 
significance. 

“Hello, Sevens,” he said. “This is Fogarty and 
I had to run out to Louisville. Will you tell them 
at the hotel that I’ll be back soon? ” When that had 
been answered, he went on in a conversational 
manner, “And by the way. Sevens, I wish you’d 
wire to our friend the attorney. Address this mes¬ 
sage to his New York office marked ‘forward.’ He 
may be out of town but he’ll probably remain in 

255 


256 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


touch with his headquarters. Say, ‘Have decided to 
consult other counsel unless I see you here immedi¬ 
ately.’ Yes, that’s all. I’ll be back soon.” Then 
Fogarty strolled out of the hotel and once more 
shaped a brisk course for the stenographer’s office, 
where he shut himself into the room that held the 
dictating machine. Certain mechanical matters 
seemed to occupy him for the better part of an hour, 
and after that he slipped a fresh record into the 
machine, and, having seated himself, grinned with 
an idiotic delight as he took up the speaking horn and 
with a solemn deliberateness began registering his 
own voice. This is what he declaimed: 

“‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, to talk of many 
things, 

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and 
kings-’ ” 

There was more than that, because the cylinder 
ran some three minutes and he was bent on filling it 
with sound, but from time to time Don Fogarty 
stopped the motor while he racked his memory for 
more elecutionary selections. After that he and 
Footman were closeted together for an hour and 
Footman embarked on work in no way connected 
with phonographs. 

In St. Louis Mr. Mandelle’s meeting with the 
man whom he had come post-haste to see had been 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


257 


both prompt and stormy—and it had netted him 
exactly nothing. 

That interview took place in a comfortably fur¬ 
nished apartment to which Mandelle, believing him¬ 
self free from observation, went openly in a taxicab, 
which, as it happened, was followed by another. 
Mandelle was spurred to such incautious haste by an 
anger that had been simmering near the boiling point 
throughout the suspense of his journey, and having 
arrived at his destination, he found himself unable to 
begin with diplomatic finesse. So soon as he and the 
man he had come to confront were safe from over¬ 
hearing, his words broke out in torrential accusa¬ 
tion. 

“What’s the idea, Carrington?” he demanded 
truculently, using the name which was known only 
here in St. Louis and which had been altered to 
Cowes in Louisville. “Are you bent in gypping me 
to a point where I’ll break away altogether? Do 
you think you’re strong enough to kick me into open 
warfare? ” 

The poker face of the man with whom Barbour 
Sevens had talked in New York, and who had, by the 
way, used even another incognito there, held its calm¬ 
ness, but his eyes bored into those of his angry visitor 
with an inquisitorial chill. 

“What’s biting you, Mandelle?” he inquired 
shortly. “It was clearly understood that you 
weren’t to come here. You not only violate that 


258 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


agreement, but you charge in on me raving like a 
riddle-spouting maniac.” 

, “Do you deny that you set a spy on me in Camden 
with orders to steal Sevens’s confession and bring it 
to you? To steal back the phonograph record, too— 
before I had the chance to identify and destroy it?” 

Carrington’s eyes narrowed and his face took on a 
metallic hardness. 

“In most unqualified terms, I deny every one of 
those things except one,” he asserted crisply. “I 
did send a man to keep an eye on you, because there 
was a hint of insurgency in your manner when we 
talked last—but that man satisfied himself of your 
sticking qualities and in twenty-four hours he left 
South Carolina.” 

“That,” broke out Mandelle wrathfully, “is an 
unmitigated lie. Your man Fogarty has been there 
all the while—and at your orders, he has robbed me 
of the evidence that gave me a balance of power. . . 

If you can’t trust me, no more can I trust you. 

Now come clean with me, Carrington, or-” 

The lawyer’s wrath overcame him. His face had 
gone purple and his voice broke. He stood with 
clenched hands and panting chest, abruptly speech¬ 
less with fury. 

“Mandelle,” said Carrington, “I haven’t the re¬ 
motest idea what you’re babbling about but there’s 
one thing that seems worth threshing out. If you’ve 
lost the confession after refusing to trust me with it, 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


259 


you’ve let me down into a mess of complications. 
Talk up, and talk plain. Who is this Fogarty you 
prattle about? What is this robbery business in 
which you seem to have played the simp?” 

“Damn you!” stormed the infuriated attorney. 
“I didn’t come here to render an accounting to you, 
but to demand one. I haven’t crooked you. It’s 
you who’ve crooked me, and now-!” 

The wild light that spurted in the speaker’s eyes 
was a flare of homicidal lunacy, ephemeral, perhaps, 
but menacing. He was trembling with uncontrolla¬ 
ble rage and he lurched forward to whip his hand up 
from a side pocket, fondling an automatic pistol. 
“Now,” he made hoarse declaration, “you come 
clean with me, or I do some killing myself.” 

Carrington stiffened as if a mild electric current 
had been circuited unexpectedly through his body, 
but his face lost nothing of its chilling composure, 
and his eyes dominated the madly shifting ones with 
an undeviating directness of inherently greater 
strength. 

“So you’re asking for the chair, are you?” he 
inquired in a hard voice that seemed equally scornful 
of the pistol and the man who flourished it in tremu¬ 
lous passion. “ You’d rather take the death sentence 
than to take my word that I know nothing about this 
robbery. I know nothing about this Fogarty and 
I’m not afraid of any panic-stricken fool like you.” 

He paused, and his lip-corners curled into an ugly 



260 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


smile though the blued metal of the automatic was 
close and the hand that held it was irresponsible. 

“I suppose you think you’re roaring like a man- 
eating lion,” he commented in a withering tone. 
“Well, believe me, Shyster Mandelle, you’re bleating 
like a scared sheep, and you make me sick! Now 
shoot or explain yourself—but do one or the other 
damn quick!” 

Just as a jet of cold water drives the frenzy out of 
fight-maddened dogs, the contemptuous dominance 
in Carrington’s face and voice cooled the lunatic 
fever in the veins of the crooked lawyer and made 
him shrink ignominiously into the shame of a re¬ 
buked child. After all, he wanted someone upon 
whom he could brace his disintegrating courage, 
rather than warfare with an enemy stronger than 
himself, and as he stood pallid and trembling with the 
pistol in his shaking hand, he knew that he was, 
in this parallel of wills, a pitiable weakling. His 
fingers opened inertly and the weapon dropped out 
of his hand to the table covering. Carrington had 
not moved and now he made no motion to pick the 
pistol up. 

“You say—” faltered Mandelle with a sudden, 
almost cringing, change of front—“you say that— 
you didn’t have me robbed—that you know nothing 
about it?” 

“I not only say that, but I might add that if you’ve 
let yourself be bilked in that fashion you owe me an 



ALIAS RED RYAN 261 

accounting. Shoot me this story and make it 
snappy.” 

Ten minutes later Mandelle rose from his chair 
with a face still parchment white but no longer 
angry. He was frightened to the edge of lunacy, but 
his fears were now of other enemies. 

“I’ve got to get my office on the wire,” faltered the 
lawyer. “Something’s going on that I don’t under¬ 
stand. Can I telephone from here?” 

“You cannot,” came the prompt response. “Do 
your talking from your hotel—but I’ll go with you 
and find out if New York knows anything. You 
must get back there to Camden.” 

Carrington was snapping out his words with 
staccato sharpness. “Your place is there. I’ll have 
New York get the dope on this Fogarty bird. If the 
State has that confession, it’s time to throw Sevens 
to the wolves, that’s all. They have nothing on you 
—or me, yet.” 

“Nothing on me?” stammered Mandelle weakly. 
“ But the paper was taken off of me.” 

“Keep your shirt on, Mandelle,” enjoined Carring¬ 
ton, and his words were delivered like kicks. “You 
let that envelope fall out of your pocket once before. 
Perhaps you did the same fool thing again. Per¬ 
haps you’ll get back to find it reposing once more in 
your letter box, if not-” 

“That’s likely,” snorted the lawyer. “Very 
likely indeed, isn’t it?” 



262 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“If not,” went on the other imperturbably, “wrap 
yourself in your legal sanctity. You repressed this 
evidence in the interests of your man. What you 
have kept secret was a privileged communication 
between lawyer and client. They can’t touch you. 
It will convict Sevens—but let it!” 

“And the phonograph record?” 

Carrington waved the question aside. 

“It will mean nothing to them. They won’t make 
anything of it.” 

But when Mandelle telephoned to his office from 
the hotel it was to receive another shock, for Bar¬ 
bour’s telegram was repeated to him, and to his 
secretary he dictated a reply to be sent from New 
York. 

“Take no step,” it enjoined, “until I arrive. 
Imperative. Am coming at once.” 

To Carrington who waited in the lobby the fright¬ 
ened attorney reported these things, then, with as 
frantic a haste as he had run west from South Caro¬ 
lina, he started his rush back again east from Mis¬ 
souri. 

The New York papers told of a blizzard that had 
swept the city, but at Camden the mocking birds 
were singing in derisive disbelief of winter, and out on 
the Number One polo field both men and ponies were 
sweating hotly through the fourth chukker of a game 
whose issue hung delicately balanced. 

Hope and Faith sat in a car parked with a dozen 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


263 


others along the side lines by the grandstand, and the 
eyes of both were animated with interest for the 
spirited picture of action on the green battle-ground 
between the goal posts. In their ears were the 
sounds of thudding hooves, shouted orders, and the 
sharp impact of mallet head on willow-root ball, and 
in their eyes was rapid motion and colour. By the 
running-board of the car stood Barbour Sevens, but 
repeatedly his gaze wandered away from the sodded 
polo field and turned backward to the railroad em¬ 
bankment which lay beyond, and his ears were strain¬ 
ing, through the noises of the game, for the whistle of 
a locomotive. The afternoon train was a little late, 
and for its coming he was waiting with the fret of 
unconfessed suspense. In his pocket were two tele¬ 
grams. One of them was from Fogarty, asserting 
that he would arrive on the mid-afternoon train, and 
asking Sevens to meet him at once at the hotel. 

Suddenly the crowd in the grandstand came to its 
feet, shouting. Sangster had backhanded a ball 
driven straight to the verge of the goal line, and saved 
his team from the breaking of a tied score—but 
through the din of applause Barbour had caught the 
whistle of the engine west of the town, and he 
pulled back his shoulders to a braced erectness. 

“I’ve got to go over to the hotel, Hope,” he ex¬ 
plained. “When the game winds up you girls can 
drive on back, and I’ll follow on foot.” 

It would take him just about the same length of 



264 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


time to go around the end of the field and enter the 
hotel from the back that would be required by a man 
alighting from the train to reach it in the depot 
wagon. But as he walked along the vividly green 
turf and under the flawlessly blue sky, he went with 
a heavy anxiety that blinded him to natural beauties. 
Under a surface of composure stirred restless fears. 
He could only guess what Fogarty had to report, 

and his apprehensions pointed all his conjectures 

« 

along the way of pessimism. Fogarty had said the 
truth would be almost, but not quite, impossible to 
prove. Fogarty had started out on an enterprise 
which must leave much to chance. Now Fogarty 
was coming back, and no hint had come ahead of him 
as to whether he returned in success or failure. 

It was, after all, the depot wagon which first 
reached the entrance to the hotel, and when he had 
hurried in and glanced about the little crowd at the 
desk, Sevens did not, at first, see the boldly angled 
face for which he looked. 

Strangers clustered there; all newly arrived guests 
with hand-baggage stacked near by, hovered over 
by waiting bellboys. 

Then Barbour saw Fogarty inside the office proper 
and at the door of the private office. Fogarty’s face 
was grave and the clerk, to whom he was speaking, 
was following his words with a gravity even deeper. 

Something was being said there of a confidential 
nature, and Sevens did not doubt that now for the 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


265 


first time this guest, who had been only a guest be¬ 
fore, was revealing himself in his more official ca¬ 
pacity, and that what instructions he was giving bore 
the force of commands. 

He saw the former thief hand the clerk an envelope, 
and saw the clerk nod, then cross over and place it 
in the box which belonged to the absent Mandelle. 

Then Fogarty came out and shook hands with 
Sevens, and as the two went up the stairs together 
Barbour’s heart sank with a sickening premonition of 
disaster, because the eyes of the other wore that fog- 
darkness which argued, in them, a burdened responsi¬ 
bility of spirit. 

They had entered the room of the newly returned 
man and had closed the door before either spoke. 
Then it was Fogarty who made the beginning. 

“Everything is still in the air,” he said briefly. 
“I’ve learned some things and I have much left to 
learn. Twenty-four hours ought to bring matters to 
a head and crisis—one way or the other. Turner 
tells me that New York is restive. They want an 
arrest made and made quick. They seem to care 
less who is arrested than that it be someone. The 
papers are riding the District Attorney.” 

Sevens nodded his head moodily. He had ner¬ 
vously drawn a lead-pencil from his pocket and stood 
fingering it—and it snapped under the unconscious 
tautness of his hand. Hope and fear had swept back 
and forth across his consciousness with such dogged 


266 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


attack and counter attack and for such a period of 
stressful waiting, that in this moment of disappoint¬ 
ment it seemed to him the verdict had been sealed, 
and that there was no more elasticity or vigour left 
in him for facing fresh assaults. 

“I’ve had two telegrams to-day,” he said bleakly. 
“One was from Mandelle—in answer to mine. It 
says he gets here immediately.” 

“That, at least, is good,” encouraged Fogarty. 
“ Until he comes we can only mark time and bite our 
thumbs. What was the other?” 

“The other,” explained Sevens dully, “was from 
Hubwell of our board of directors. I’ll show it to 
you later. It orders me back to New York as 
promptly as possible. ... It doesn’t command 
instant obedience, but its tone is peremptory—and 
unfriendly. I believe they begin to suspect me 
there, too.” 

Again Fogarty nodded. 

“They’ve been getting restive there,” he admitted. 
“I’ve known that for a day or two through Turner. 
I’ve held them off so far by pleading my need for you 
here in giving me business details.” He paused and 
shrugged his shoulder. “I haven’t been turning up 
much at this end, though,” he added. “And I 
shouldn’t wonder if my advice is to be ignored. I 
may even be called in myself.” 

“And then my goose is cooked! What did you 
learn?” demanded Sevens, grasping after some straw 



ALIAS RED RYAN 267 

to support his submerging hope, and the detective 
laid a hand on his shoulder. 

“I’d rather make no report to-day,” he said. 
“I’ve by no means given up the game, but as I said 
before, the next twenty-four hours must tell the 
story. I want you to keep a grip on yourself and 
save all questions until to-morrow. I want your 
help in a way you can only give it if you act in blind 
obedience. We’ve got to bluff like hell, old man. 
There’s a dance to-night, isn’t there?” 

“I believe so.” 

“I want you to come and bring the ladies. I want 
you to be seen there in the best of spirits and morale. 
Later that may be important.” 

Sevens shook his head despondently. 

“You’re casting me in a hard role,” he answered, 
“but I’ll do my best.” 

“It’s got to be as good as anybody’s best,” warned 
Fogarty crisply. “And now I must be alone for a 
while and uninterrupted. I’ve got a little matter on 
hand that won’t wait.” 

When Sevens had gone Fogarty took out of his 
trunk a small kit of tools and the counterfeit pass¬ 
key, and over the phonograph in his neighbour’s empty 
room he worked for a few minutes with quick exact¬ 
ness. Whatever his undertaking was, it left no mark 
on the instrument which had now been unpacked and 
set up ready for use. Then Fogarty went back to 
his own apartment, where he bathed, dressed in 


268 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


evening clothes, and sat by his window watching a 
gorgeousness of colour shift and brighten in the sun¬ 
set sky over the western pines. 

The grounds about the Palmetto Inn that night 
were bathed in a wash of cobalt and silver. The 
moon rode high and white, and formal hedges, deodar 
cedars, mock-oranges, and hollies stood massively 
low and slenderly tall in contours of amazing beauty. 

Dance music drifted out on the quiet breeze that 
carried a spicy fragrance of pine needles, and after 
the first number Don Fogarty stood in the door of 
the dance hall chatting inconsequently with Hope 
and Hope’s husband. Barbour was obeying his 
orders to the peak of his overstrained abilities, but 
Hope’s glance anxiously noted the troubled crinkles 
that drew about his eyes. She forbore from ques¬ 
tioning him, but she wondered and worried. 

Fogarty’s pupils clouded to their fog-tone as he 
saw Faith drift by on the arm of a polo player. He 
read eagerness in the man’s eyes and guessed that the 
pair were going out there where there were influences 
of magic and langour in the silver moonlight. He 
himself, until certain developments had come and 
shaped themselves into a pattern which he hoped to 
dictate, must stay here indoors and think, not of 
love and moon mists, but of their opposites. 

The evening was still young when Joe Mandelle 
came through the entrance door, convoyed by a 
coloured baggage-bearer; and Fogarty who, through 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


269 


seemingly negligent eyes, had been watchful, stepped 
back out of the line of vision. He saw the lawyer go 
to the desk and call for his mail and key. 

Fogarty had no need to overhear the conversation 
which ensued because it was a conversation one side 
of which he had himself arranged. The clerk, after 
handing out the collected mail, produced separately 
another envelope, bearing a name and room number, 
and sealed with three dabs of red wax. 

As it was delivered into Mandelle’s hand, that hand 
trembled violently and the recipient had to concen¬ 
trate his mind to catch the low words to which the 
clerk, following explicit instructions, was giving 
utterance. 

“That envelope was picked up in the hall near 
your door, Mr. Mandelle,” he said, “just after you 
left the house. I suppose it must have been 
dropped/* 

The lawyer stood looking incredulously at the 
thing. He knew he had not dropped it, but con¬ 
ceivably Fogarty, in the haste of his flight, had done 
so after stealing it—conceivably but most improb¬ 
ably. Now he inquired pointedly: 

“Are you sure it was picked up just after I left? 
Has Mr. Fogarty returned?” 

“He got back this afternoon, sir—a few hours 
ago.” , 

“And this was found while—while we were both 
away?” 




270 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


“So I understand, sir. I didn’t find it myself, of 
course.” 

Mandelle’s chest gave a spasmodic jerk of relief. 
At all events, he seemed to have back his envelope— 
unopened. He wheeled and went almost cheerfully 
up the stairs. Carrington had said that the thing 
might have been dropped and not stolen at all, but 
that suggestion he had dismissed as an absurdity. 
Now it seemed on the unaccountable face of things 
that Carrington had been right, and if only such a 
miracle of reassurance could come to him as to the 
other stolen article, he might once more rest reason¬ 
ably immune from the corrosive heart gnawing of 
fear. 

In the hallway above stairs, as Mandelle hurried 
by, he was surprised to see that Fogarty’s room 
stood open and seemingly empty. Its lights were 
switched on and as Mandelle paused for an instant, 
a sudden beading of astonished moisture came out on 
his temples. On the table that was otherwise empty, 
except for an ice-pitcher and drinking glass, stood 
a phonograph cylinder! 

No one was passing in the hall at the moment and 
Mandelle listened. There was no sound from the 
bathroom, which was the only part of the apartment 
into which he could not see. Desperate curiosity 
invited him to enter, and he answered the call. The 
place was as empty as it hdd seemed and with a 
triumphant flash in his eye the lawyer picked up the 



ALIAS RED RYAN 271 

phonograph record and hastened with it into his own 
room. 

Below, Fogarty had been standing idly smoking 
but with his eyes on the face of the clock. He was 
giving the lawyer five minutes in which to open and 
inspect the recovered envelope which had been so 
mysteriously restored to him, after driving him to 
desperation of fear by its disappearance. 

Then with a nod to Sevens to follow, he deliber¬ 
ately climbed the stairs. At his own door he 
paused, but did not enter. He cast a quick glance 
at the table on which the cylinder had stood, then 
smiled quietly and went on. 

Almost at his heels followed a bellhop, and this, 
too, was not by chance but by prearrangement. The 
boy knocked on Mandelle’s door and Sevens caught 
the sharp note of unwelcome with which the occupant 
demanded, “Who’s there?” 

“It’s me, Mr. Mandelle. It’s Jim,” answered the 
coloured boy. “They was workin’ on the bathroom 
plumbin’ this evenin’. The office sent me up to test 
it.” 

Reluctantly Mandelle opened the door, and as the 
Negro entered Fogarty slipped uninvited after him, 
and stood, with Sevens at his shoulder, just inside the 
threshold. 


CHAPTER XX 


M ANY incidental arts which were needful 
feeders to more important strategies lay in 
the province of the man who had begun life 
as a gay-cat ahead of a yegg outfit. Among these 
lessons, taught by experience, was the maxim that in 
any surprising and delicate situation the burden of 
disadvantage lies on the first speaker. 

Now while the Negro went into the bathroom, 
tested the faucets and came out, then while he was 
being tipped and withdrawing, no word passed among 
the three white men. The boy had closed the door 
and gone on and still the silence held. In that inter¬ 
val of useful pause Fogarty’s eye noted that during 
the little margin of time since Mandelle’s entrance 
he had already thrust upon the dictaphone the 
record which he had paused to confiscate as he 
passed the room next door. Fogarty inferred from 
that incident that the lawyer had been first con¬ 
cerned in assuring himself as to the contents of his 
envelope and next in reading the message of the 
phonograph cylinder. He knew, too, because of 
what he had himself done to the instrument a little 
while before, that it had as yet given forth no sound. 

272 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


£73 


Now he waited and Mandelle waited, but being less 
educated in the principle of enduring the embarrass¬ 
ment of loaded silences, the lawyer spoke first. 

“What do you want?” he demanded angrily. 

“What should I want, my dear fellow,” countered 
the other with entire urbanity, “except to welcome 
you home?” 

Mandelle stood irresolute and flushing angrily. 
He was not in the least beguiled by this tone of 
cordial friendship. He knew that he stood facing 
one proven enemy and one man whose last communi¬ 
cation had argued disaffection. He felt oppressively 
the sense of cleverly masked ambuscade, yet he hesi¬ 
tated to lash out wrathfully, and he took refuge in 
the weak resort of sarcastic rejoinder. 

“I’m flattered, of course,” he said. “I hadn’t 
hoped you’d be so speedy of welcome, especially 
inasmuch as I’m told you got back only a few hours 
ahead of me.” 

“I see,” remarked Fogarty absently, “that you’ve 
paid me the compliment of stopping in my open room, 
and taking along my phonograph record. I sup¬ 
pose it’s on the principle of ‘take it home and try it 
on your piano’.” 

Mandelle started, then his flushed face gave back 
an impulse of hatred that was stronger than his 
powers of control. “I’d be glad to know,” he re¬ 
torted acidly, “how my dictaphone cylinders get into 
your room in my absence.” 


274 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Fogarty’s brows lifted and over his face came the 
declaration of puzzlement. 

“Your record?” he questioned stupidly. “My 
dear Mandelle, I’m afraid I don’t get you. It looks 
just the other way to me. It looks as though my 
dictaphone record got into your room under circum¬ 
stances that need explanation.” He broke off, then 
laughed. “However, the explanation is clear. You 
lost one and you jumped to the conclusion that this 
was it. 

“I haven’t jumped to any conclusion,” retorted 
Mandelle. “I still believe that is mine, and I still 
am curious to know how you came by it. It hasn’t 
a nice aspect when things drift from room to room 
that way.” 

Fogarty’s face blackened abruptly and he stepped 
aggressively forward. Even Sevens, who was per¬ 
plexedly following the trend of events, believed that 
his companion had been momentarily sidetracked 
from a sure purpose to a personal irritation which 
threatened a physical collision. 

“Mandelle, do you mean to accuse me?” began 
the detective vehemently, then catching himself up 
on the curb of self-control, he laughed in swift tran¬ 
sition of mood. 

“But this is sheer nonsense,” he added almost 
contritely. “As near as I can make out each of us 
had a phonograph record. You lost yours and, see¬ 
ing mine, thought it was the one you sought. That 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


275 


was natural enough.” He paused, then went on 
with thoroughly restored good humour. “And the 
solution is as simple as the mistake. I see you have 
a machine there and have already put the record on 
it. Touch the button. Then we shall soon know 
which of us is right. We won’t have to cut the thing 
in two like Solomon’s baby.” 

As he spoke Fogarty crossed the room, and swiftly 
Mandelle interposed himself between the invader 
and the instrument. 

“Stop,Fogarty,” he commanded. “You’re not here 
by my invitation. Don’t push your meddling too far!” 

Again the detective paused in seeming irresolution 
and again his face wore its expression of puzzled 
rebuff. 

“What’s the idea?” he inquired with a renewed 
hardness of voice. “You pretend to think that, for 
some unexplained reason, I’ve taken a phonograph 
record that belongs to you. You haven’t yet denied 
that the one you now have on your machine was 
taken from my room without my permission. The 
cylinder I had was one that I dictated myself. It’s 
rather a foolish thing, but there’s no secret about it. 
I’m willing to turn on the switch and let her rip. 
The first sentence will be enough to satisfy me as to 
whether it’s yours or mine. Why not let the record 
speak for itself?” 

Mandelle stood in front of the dictaphone in the 
defensive attitude of a man who means to hold his 


276 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


ground against trespassing, but his face began to 
show incipient indications of some spiritual dis¬ 
integration. Sevens, from his position of vitally 
interested onlooker, felt, with a creeping at his scalp, 
the dramatic realization that he was watching the 
beginning of a psychological duel which must go to 
a finish. 

Mandelle, too, knew that he must say something. 
He was being led on with a disingenuous seeming of 
candour, yet he must make some reply and one that 
smacked of outward logic. 

“We can’t try the thing on that machine,” he 
announced sullenly. “That machine has been tam¬ 
pered with. It won’t work.” 

“Won’t work? That’s odd.” Fogarty stepped 
forward. “Shall I see if I can make it work? I’m 
a handy sort of tinkerer after a fashion. Perhaps 
the tightening of a screw somewhere-” 

“No!” The monosyllable ripped out like a shot. 
“Get out of my room. I don’t want you here.” 

The man with the slim but compact figure and the 
sandy hair came to a halt, but his eyes narrowed to 
bright slits. 

“ That record belongs to the one or the other of us, 
Mandelle,” he said quietly. “But this much is 
certain. It was taken from my room when I was not 
in that room—and presumably it was taken by you. 
Now I claim it and you claim it, and I don’t propose 
to be bullied in the matter. One of two things we 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


277 

must do. I have a phonograph myself. We will 
take the thing into my room and see, by testing it, 
whose it is, or I shall call the office and complain that 
you have robbed me. Which shall it be?” 

“I robbed you!” Mandelle barked out the words 
with a choking passion of indignation for the inso¬ 
lence of such a statement from the man who had so 
boldly plundered him. “Why, damn you-” 

As though an electric current had been snapped his 
voice fell dead, and his pale face altered to a spas¬ 
modic fright. This was perhaps precisely what his 
enemy was playing for, the effort to jar him off his 
mental balance and make him incautiously furious. 
With that realization he drew back his shoulders and 
began sparring for time. 

“All right, Fogarty,” he said with a poor attempt 
at composure. “Perhaps I was hasty. We’re mak¬ 
ing a mountain out of a mole hill, after all. Let’s go 
in and see what your machine indicates.” He paused, 
then added sententiously: “I use the machine for 
my dictation, and much of my business is confi¬ 
dential. You say you can recognize your record at 
the first words. I can do the same. I shall require 
you to stop on the first few sounds.” 

“That suits me,” agreed Fogarty. “Or, on the 
other hand, I’m equally willing to let it run its 
length.” 

“I’m not,” came the short answer. 

Let’s go to your room.” 


“Come on. 



278 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


Fogarty turned and led the way and once inside he 
brought from the bathroom where it had been con¬ 
cealed the old phonograph which he had borrowed 
from Lawrence Footman. This he set up on the 
table and wound; then to Mandelle, who still held the 
record in his hand, he turned, saying, with a smile, 
“ There’s the machine. Suppose you do the honours/’ 

Sevens had been standing by, wondering, yet 
realizing that under all this outwardly trivial byplay 
moved some tide of major force and importance 
which he could not gauge or understand. He knew 
that in Mandelle himself some destructive process 
was steadily at work, some crumbling of moral 
fibre; some growing fermentation of terror. 

Now the attorney moved forward and placed the 
end of the cylinder over the metal core designed to 
hold it as an axis, but just as it engaged, the lawyer 
impulsively snatched it back again and, with a 
stifled outcry, hurled the thing against the metal 
tubes of the radiator, shattering it into fragments. 

To Barbour Sevens came the sense of sickening de¬ 
feat. The lawyer and the detective had each known 
things unknown to him, but what he had seen proved 
beyond doubt that this wax cylinder held something 
of tremendous importance—and now the cylinder was 
irreplaceably destroyed. 

Fogarty, too, stood there with a face that seemed 
momentarily distressed while Mandelle stared at 
him with a burning light of defiance in his eyes. 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


279 


Then as the tableau became strained and pregnant, 
Fogarty’s voice broke it, half humorously and half 
mournfully. 

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” 
he observed, “couldn’t pick Humpty-Dumpty up 
again.” 

“No,” rasped Mandelle belligerently. “That’s 
that!” 

“Yes, as you say,” echoed Fogarty. “That’s 
that, and it’s a pity, too, because there were two 
phonograph records, seemingly each of some impor¬ 
tance; and it’s hard to understand why you shouldn’t 
have been willing to cooperate in sorting them out.” 

“There were never two of them,” contradicted 
Mandelle tensely. “There was only one. You 
lied about the second. That one was mine, stolen 
from me by you, and it was a matter of legal business 
which concerned a client and was confidential. For 
that reason I broke it. You say I stole it. I did 
nothing of the sort. I saw it in your room and 
recognized it and took it back.” 

Barbour was standing by the door of the room. 
Now Fogarty glanced at him and instructed quietly, 
“Sevens, be good enough to turn the key and put it 
in your pocket. I can only assume that our friend 
here is for the moment acting irrationally, and I must 
convince him of his mistake.” 

Mandelle had taken a step toward the door, but he 
halted because he saw Sevens standing planted 


280 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


against it with his arms crossed and a glitter in his 
eyes that was new and disconcerting. 

“You say,” began Fogarty again—and now his 
voice was velvety in its smoothness—“that there was 
only one of these records. You say I lied when I 
asserted that there were two. You were wrong, 
Mandelle-^-and here is the second.” 

He had moved, as he spoke, around to a dressing 
table and had opened a small drawer. Now he held 
a second cylinder with two spread fingers of his left 
hand thrust into its hollow core. His right hand was 
in the side pocket of his dinner jacket. 

The lawyer’s face worked wildly and his eyes 
flared into jets of half-madness. He seemed on the 
point of lunging forward in attack, but Fogarty’s 
voice came again and this time it was like the ripping 
of canvas. As though many intervening years had 
rolled away, the detective’s face wore a menacing 
snarl that bared his teeth, and his language reverted 
to the vulgar argot of the gutter. 

“Steady there, bo!” he commanded in a rasping 
whisper. “ There’s a gat on you, see? ” and the right 
hand in the pocket of the dinner jacket gestured 
dangerously. 

Mandelle caught himself and stood, half rocking, 
and then surprisingly enough, as though he were 
waking suddenly out of an evil dream, Fogarty 
flushed brick red. 

“My God,” he exclaimed in a voice of deep cha- 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


281 

grin. “I forgot myself. I thought I was Red 
Ryan again. No matter.” He paused and went 
on in the even tenor out of which he had permitted 
himself to be, for the moment, jarred. 

“I have here the second record,” he said. “And 
if this is yours then, since you have destroyed mine, 
it’s a fair exchange. On the other hand, if it’s mine, 
it belongs to me. Now I propose to see which one 
was broken and which one saved.” 

“Then you did rob me!” 

“I did rob you, and Em not through with you 
yet.” 

Fogarty glanced at Barbour and spoke crisply. 

“Sevens,” he said, “will you hold the gun on this 
bird? And if he bobbles shoot. We’re right down 
to cases now, and there’s stuff coming through here 
that’s likely to excite him.” 

Since he had come up the stairs Sevens had not 
spoken. Now he laughed shortly and his voice was 
not reassuring. 

“Will I shoot the damned Judas?” he questioned. 
“I almost hope he gives me the chance.” 

Mandelle stood, tremulous and pale against the 
wall with his hands raised, hardly daring to meet the 
smoulder in the eyes of the man who had been his 
client, as they looked at him across the short-bar¬ 
relled pistol. The hand that held it was granite-firm. 
It was even easier to watch Fogarty, who fitted the 
second cylinder onto his machine and then, when his 


282 ALIAS RED RYAN 

finger rested close to the starting device, took it 
away again. 

Fogarty, as if in afterthought, removed the cylin¬ 
der and tried to put it on backward, but it would 
not fit the core, and the detective laughed. 

“They tell me,” he said meditatively, “that when 
these machines were first devised you could run a 
record backward or forward—and when you put it 
on backward you got a strange jargon.” He paused, 
then added, “As you gentlemen both see, that 
can’t be done with the more modern dictaphone. 
It’s a one-way machine.” 

Sevens, mystified more arid more, stood listening 
but holding with his eye and gun the man whose face 
was going from putty gray to sickly green against the 
wall. 

“Now,” continued Fogarty, with a drawling and 
maddening deliberation, “I shall put this record on 
the only way it will go—and start the music.” 

He paused again, and his pauses seemed to be, if 
anything, more calculated than his words. Then he 
laughed to himself with a low chuckling enjoyment, 
started the machine, and in the room which had be¬ 
come oppressively silent they were listening to the 
jargon of sound that had confounded Markwitz. 

“A linguist of national reputation,” observed the 
detective, stopping the machine abruptly, “assured 
me that that cylinder contains a message in a lan¬ 
guage which he cannot identify—but which he is 



ALIAS RED RYAN 283 

willing to take oath is some tongue that has a gram¬ 
mar and a literature.” 

From the almost collapsed figure against the wall 
came a sound like a sob—but it was a sob of relief. 
It was the releasing of a terror-tightened throat into 
something like ease. Mandelle felt like a man re¬ 
prieved on the gallows platform and his voice pro¬ 
claimed his emotion. 

“So you’ve had the sharks working on it,” he ex¬ 
claimed, “and they couldn’t figure it out. I could 
have told you they couldn’t.” 

“Just so,” acceded Fogarty. “They did their best 
and passed it up—so I had to bring it back and trust 
to you and myself.” 

“Trust me and be damned,” exclaimed Mandelle, 
and the fishy eye of despair showed a reviving reflex 
of hopeful light. Into the gray pallor crept a hint 
of swelling colour. 

“ I said, trust you and myself /” Fogarty corrected 
him. “I have already said that you could only put 
the record on the machine one way but-” 

There was another long silence through which 
Mandelle stood holding his breath. It was Sevens 
who at length demanded, “But what?” 

“But,” went on Fogarty quietly, “I am going to 
give you gentlemen a little demonstration. It is 
possible to run the machine backward. 

Mandelle had forgotten to keep his hands high. 
Now, with the collapse of his brief mirage of hope, 





284 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


they came down and began clawing idiotically at the 
wall beside him. He seemed about to fall, yet 
braced himself and continued to stand wobbling on 
weak legs. 

As he talked, Fogarty had wound a string deftly 
and rapidly about the axle of the disconnected core 
and now he began slowly drawing the cord toward 
him in such fashion that the diaphragm needle was 
traversing the record from end to front. At first the 
sound was weak and incoherent, but as the motion 
steadied it came slow and strong. Sevens started 
violently as he recognized the unmistakably repro¬ 
duced voice of the man who stood there in palsy and 
pallor before him; the man who was, himself, now 
voiceless with fright. 

“Re: Beverly Brothers undertaking,” announced 
the inanimate tongue steadily and clearly. “Sevens 
and Shell have talked matter over—period—Sevens 
is double-crossing and means to go into affair for pur¬ 
pose of trapping you—period—I have been called in 
and this has been explained-” 

Suddenly the sound stopped. Fogarty whisked 
the record from the machine and put it into his 
pocket. 

“That’s enough to recognize it by,” he said. “The 
sharks gave it up, but 7 didn’t give it up. I found 
out some strange things, too, as I played with my 
experiments. For instance, you can dictate the 
word ‘antagonize’ in the usual way and it comes 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


285 


buck, reversed, as ‘zine-o-gat-na’—but when you 
dictate ‘zineogatna’ it comes back antagyonise. 
I understand you can reverse syllables but not 
breathings.” 

Abruptly Fogarty rose, and the academic quiet 
which he had assumed dropped away. He stood 
before Mandelle, who trembled more violently and 
whose face had become piteously drawn. 

“The confession that you have in your pocket, 
Mandelle!” he snapped out in staccato sharpness, 
“is a counterfeit, made for me by an expert stenogra¬ 
pher. The added postscript and signature are 
traced forgeries. The original is now in my breast 
pocket.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


H ANGING on the brink of complete demoral¬ 
ization, Mandelle made one final and su¬ 
preme effort to rally his broken spirit for a 
last stand. Slowly he pulled his sagging limpness 
into a sort of erectness and licked his ash-dry lips. 

“You have robbed me,” he said, “and you are try¬ 
ing to bluff me. That confession incriminates only 
Sevens there. The phonograph record was faked by 
you—it’s not legal evidence.” 

“Am I a ventriloquist—to fake your voice like 
that?” inquired Fogarty pleasantly. “Don’t you 
fancy a jury would regard that voice as a sort of vocal 
signature?” 

“No Court,” asserted Mandelle with an unsuccess¬ 
ful try at categoric certainty, “would let it go to the 
jury. It’s incompetent.” 

“Thanks for the free legal advice,” responded 
Fogarty. “But we mean to let the Court decide that 
in due time—and I might cite decisions indicating 
that you’re mistaken, at that.” 

The lawyer went slowly over to a chair by the 
Table and sat heavily down. His face was a study 
with its gray pallor and its dark-ringed eyes and 

m 




ALIAS RED RYAN 287 

with its struggle to wear, over those evidences of de¬ 
feat, the expression of one who still manoeuvres 
fighting forces with a prospect of success. 

4 'This is all sound and fury, Fogarty,” he said, 
forcing his words. "You have no evidence that that 
cylinder ever passed between me and any other hu¬ 
man being. Even you can’t pretend to connect me 
with this case unless you can show a conspiracy with 
some other definite person or persons. You’re con¬ 
ducting a clever fishing expedition . . . but the 

man you’re seeking to trap is a lawyer . . . and 

you don’t dare arrest me on what you pretend to 
know.” 

"Thanks again for the legal advice,” observed the 
detective drily. "Yet before you leave this room I 
do expect to arrest you. However, perhaps, it would 
be better if I told you what I know.” 

"Yes.” Mandelle’s voice was a tone less strong 
now. "Possibly it would.” 

"When the Turner people called me in,” began 
Fogarty*crisply, "I had no thought of you, and when 
I came down here my suspicion of you was the most 
shadowy of hunches. You made your first misstep 
when you turned down Lou Stine’s defense and when 
Lou Stine pointed out to me that your running into 
the thieves who stuck up Slapinsky’s place was a 
coincidence worth studying. You made your second 
when you let me see on your desk pad that you were 
also in consultation with Beverly Brothers—but all 


288 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


that stuff was as thin and gauzy as cobweb—except 
to a fellow who plays hunches. You’re quite right 
though in saying that I’m helpless unless I have 
evidence of a conspiracy, and conspiracy is a tricky 
thing to establish.” 

“So you’re going to find,” commented the lawyer. 

“While I’ve been down here,” went on Fogarty, 
“the Turner people have been pretty busy up there. 
It struck me as queer that you talked with Shell and 
Sevens as a lawyer the day before the murder; that 
you were closeted with Sevens on the night of the 
murder, as the police knew; and that you went to his 
office the next morning and yet that you dropped out 
of the case entirely after that. The others over¬ 
looked the significance of all this only because, in a 
fashion, Sevens vouched for you and it occurred to 
no one to suspect Sevens—not even to me.” 

He paused and there was a heavy silence in the 
room. 

“You say I have no evidence that that cylinder 
was ever out of your hands—but you’re wrong there. 
I saw the package at the post office when it came 
from St. Louis, and I made note of the sender’s 
name.” 

At that assertion the attorney almost smiled, and 
Fogarty smiled quite openly. “You are thinking,” 
he observed, “that since it was a fictitious name and 
address that didn’t net me much. You’re quite 
right. In tracing it I got nowhere—but it proved 




ALIAS RED RYAN 289 

that the thing was a communication—with some¬ 
one.” 

Someone’s not enough, you know,” Mandelle 
cut in. “It must be a definitely identified person.” 

“Quite so. Also I made a mistake in thinking of 
the cylinder, before I knew its contents, as a message 
from someone else to you. It did not occur to me 
that it was a message from you to someone else—a 
message so incriminating that you must have it back 
and destroy it before you could sleep soundly. It 
did not occur to me, in short, that in the hands of 
the prosecution that record was precisely as damaging 
to you as the confession that Sevens signed would 
be to him. That knowledge came later.” 

“It’s not knowledge yet. It’s far-fetched in¬ 
ference.” 

“For the moment, then, let that pass. When 
you first lost your envelope I made a copy of its con¬ 
tents. Then for the first time I had the guilt of 
Sevens seemingly established. Then for the first 
time he entered my mind as even a supposable con¬ 
spirator—and in spite of the evidence he didn’t fit 
that role, but you did, and I talked with him.” 

“All he could tell you was that I gave him sound 
advice.” 

“Sound advice from the standpoint of a Judas who 
meant to make him stand for the collar,” amplified 
Fogarty. “And yet one part of it was as sound as a 
nut. You explained to him that the first man taken. 



290 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


under the shadow of suspicion would have the burden 
of proof on his shoulders. You pointed out that, 
once the D. A.’s office had a defendant, every particle 
of testimony that built into his defense would be 
under the guns of the State—and that every witness 
who appeared for the people would be bolstered 
up. That was really good advice. It was so good 
that I insisted Sevens should continue to follow it 
—until we had you and your pals safely in the dock 
as defendants and he could go as a prosecution wit¬ 
ness.” 

“And that you haven’t yet accomplished.” 

“Then I decoyed you away,” proceeded Fogarty 
calmly. “And you ran to the man we hadn’t suc¬ 
ceeded in locating, the man whom, but for your 
inestimable aid, we might never have located; the 
man who had mailed to you the phonograph record, 
the man whom you met at the Seelbach Hotel in 
Louisville. . . . Now we are coming to the con¬ 

spirators.” 

He broke off, and despite the best efforts of a 
desperately braced nerve, Mandelle sagged as though 
he had been bludgeoned. His gray face again took 
on the greenish shade of bilge water and his hands 
shook so on the table top that he withdrew them and 
let them lie in his lap. 

“Who was this man?” demanded Mandelle with a 
broken-backed defiance, and Fogarty countered, 
“Don’t you think it would.be wise for you to tell us? 


ALIAS RED RYAN 291 

The prosecution might be able to use you as a witness, 
and grant immunity, you know.” 

“ Thank you.” The attorney was moistening his lips 
after every sentence, but his eyes were as grim and 
savage as those of a cornered rat. “That’s what I 
thought. It’s a fishing expedition. Your arch has 
no keystone and you want me to supply it. I’ll see 
you in hell first!” 

“This individual, whatever his name, was the man 
you advised to approach Barbour Sevens. He was 
the man you warned—by that phonograph record— 
after your talk with Tom Shell.” 

“All which pretended knowledge is empty without 
his name.” 

“Pardon me a moment,” exclaimed Fogarty, as if 
in sudden memory of an important matter which had 
been forgotten. He went to the telephone and, 
sitting cross-legged on the side of his bed, called the 
office. 

“I was expecting a telegram,” he said. “You 
know that I’m in my room if one comes, don’t you?” 

There was a pause. Then in simulated irritation 
Fogarty spoke again: 

“No, I haven’t been outside at all. I’ve been 
here waiting for that message and it s awkward to 
have had it delayed. ... No, of course you 
didn’t send it up as you thought I was out, but now 
just repeat it to me over the ’phone and send it up at 
your leisure. Yes, I’m ready.” 


292 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


He paused, and his gaze bent itself narrowly on 
Mandelle as he repeated the words aloud. Man- 
delle’s eyes were fixed with a feverish burning on his 
own. 

“‘Don Fogarty, Camden Scar. . . . Have 

arrested Tom Carrington in St. Louis. ... Is 
bitter against Mandelle and ready to talk. Jim 
Brice.’ Thank you. Will you immediately file my 
telegram already written and marked Number One?” 

Fogarty set down the ’phone and Mandelle came up 
out of his chair as though half electrocuted, then 
sank into it again and sat in a clammy and nerveless 
sweat. 

“So Tom Carrington would seem to be the name,” 
commented Fogarty amiably, “Tom Carrington alias 
S. C. Cowes, alias Tom Rathbone. . . . Then 

there’s Jennings in New York. I dare say he’s under 
arrest as a material witness by now. After all, you 
can’t blame these boys if they feel the time has come 
to talk—and are anxious to talk first. With the 
D. A.’s office, it’s first come, first served, you know.” 

Mandelle was gulping and licking his lips. The 
mention of these names had been as destructive to 
his shredded confidence as exploding shells, and now 
he mumbled in a terror-stricken voice, “Jennings— 
what do you know about Jennings?” 

“Turner looked him up, when we got interested in 
phonographs,” answered Fogarty. “Your office 
didn’t realize that there was any secret about who 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


293 


shaved your used cylinders. We didn’t have to 
throw a very stiff scare into Jennings to learn that he 
had also acted, on occasion, as a messenger.” 

Mandelle thrust his arms out limp on the table 
and let his face sink down between his elbows. His 
fingers twitched spasmodically and his shoulders 
shook. Fogarty went quietly over, taking from his 
pocket something that glittered with a nickelled 
brightness, and snapped the locks of the bracelets 
upon the extended wrists. 

At the touch of the cold metal the lawyer raised 
his head and sat gazing at the handcuffs. Then, in a 
faint and broken voice, he inquired, “Not that it 
matters much . . . but how . . . did you 

know . . . about Carrington?” 

“By shadowing you when you ran to him. My 
man was in the lobby when he waited for you to 
telephone to your office and when you dictated a 
telegram to Sevens to be sent from there.” 

Stupidly the lawyer nodded, then raising the man¬ 
acled wrists and looking at them, he spoke steadily. 

“You’re right. It’s every man for himself now. 
I’m ready to talk, and I want my statement to be 
dated early. Call in a notary to swear me.” 

Again Fogarty went to the ’phone. When he had 
given the call that the prisoner suggested, he added 
an instruction of his own. 

“Now please despatch the telegrams that you have 
there marked Number Two and Number Three.” 


294 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


An hour later Sevens and Fogarty stood by the 
door as a local policeman led Mandelle out in custody 
and escorted him through a rear exit. For a little 
there was silence, then Sevens said, “God knows I 
oughtn’t to criticise you in any detail—yet you must 
have known all this, this afternoon—and you might 
have saved me some hours in hell. ,, 

Fogarty laid a hand on his arm. 

“I told you we had to do some tall bluffing. This 
afternoon I suspected, even believed it all—but Man¬ 
delle had to confirm it before I could act.” 

“But the telegram that came over the ’phone from 
St. Louis?” 

“That came only from the office downstairs. I 
composed it myself. We had Carrington under sur¬ 
veillance, of course, but he hadn’t been arrested. 
Until Mandelle broke down, we had no admission 
strong enough to go on. Telegram Number One 
gave Brice word to seize Carrington. Number Two 
called for the arrest of Jennings, and Number Three 
reported to Turner. Mandelle’s statement will be 
the first and it’s complete.” 

The music was still swinging its spirited beat across 
the floor where the dancers drifted, and its cadences 
came out on the long veranda that overlooked the 
moon-steeped grounds. At one end of this veranda, 
with no other chairs occupied near their own, sat 
Don Fogarty and a woman. The woman was not 


ALIAS RED RYAN 


295 


Faith, but her sister Hope, and sometimes as he 
talked the detective could see the younger girl pass 
the frame of the lighted window in the arms of 
another man. 

“Barbour has worn a troubled look of late,” said 
Hope uneasily. “Do you know what causes it, Mr. 
Fogarty?” 

“At all events, it’s not yourself that would be doing 
it,” laughed the man who had been by his own ac¬ 
knowledgment a “damned good thief.” “You’re 
blooming like a rose of Sharon.” 

“Yes,” she smiled, “I’m not even frightened about 
myself any more. This wonderful place must really 
have been Ponce de Leon’s discovery.” 

“I’ll tell you what’s been plaguing Barbour,” 
announced Fogarty abruptly, and then for ten 
crowded minutes, while Hope’s heart hammered 
fast, he sketched for her the near-tragedy that had 
been acting itself out, all unsuspected by her, under 
her eyes, and which had a half hour ago come to its 
final curtain. When he was through she leaned for¬ 
ward and her hands fell on his arms. 

“And we owe it all to you,” she declared, tears 
making her voice tremulous. “I wonder if there’s 
any way we can ever—even in a little part—pay it 
back.” 

“Sure and there is,” he answered with a nervous 
laugh. “And I’m presenting my bill forthwith.” 

“What can we do?” she questioned—and of a 


296 ALIAS RED RYAN 

sudden his utterance became halting with embarrass¬ 
ment. 

“Has Faith talked to you about me?” he de¬ 
manded. “Has she told you about my shameful 
war record?” 

Hope nodded her head slowly. “I’m sure, though, 
I’m the only person in the world she’s mentioned it 
to,” she made answer. “She had to talk to some¬ 
one—and I told her I knew there was no such fault 
in you.” 

Fogarty laughed and studied the glowing cigarette 
end in his long fingers. 

“As it happens,” he said, “I have right here in my 
pocket a clean bill of health in that matter. I told 
her the truth and I called it an allegory—but there 
were times when the temptation was strong to hand 
her this envelope.” 

“In Heaven’s name, why didn’t you do it, Don?” 

“Because-” For an instant his voice shook, 

then steadied and went on with a humour as light as 
down. “Sure, it’s because I’m in love with a girl 
that I can’t ask to marry with.” 

“Who? Why?” 

“Faith, of course. . . . Because I’m me.” 

“Why again?” 

“Because she’s young. ... If I handed out 
that official justification I’d be nominating myself as 
a hero, which I’m no such animal. And, because 
she’s young, again, she’d fall for it.” 




ALIAS RED RYAN 


m 

“And mightn’t she do worse?” 

This time it was he who laid his hand on her arm, 
and it was his eyes that looked into hers with an 
earnestness that the forced laughter could not wholly 
belie. 

“She needs a gentleman,” he said. “She thinks 
I am one but I’m not—at least not yet. Me, I’m 
just a gent—and it’s quite a different thing alto¬ 
gether. She’d fall for me now—but later, she’d 
know she’d been bunked.” 

“You are a gentleman, Don.” Again Hope’s 
voice trembled and again Fogarty laughed. 

“Oh, I’m going to be one,” he answered. “Give 
me time. . . . But so far I’ve only come half 

way. I’ve got the front, and I mean to build behind 
it. . . . When I’ve done that—if she hasn’t 

found someone already up to specifications, you’ll 
find me coming back. . . . Meanwhile-” 

4 ‘ Yes—mean while ? ’ ’ 

“ Meanwhile, I’m going to New York to send Man- 
delle and Carrington up the river. That will be busy 
work and I need right busy work just now.” 

“And you aren’t going to tell Faith?” 

“Not a word. But I’m going to leave my bill of 
health with you and—some day, not too soon, per¬ 
haps—well, I think you understand.” 

There was a catch in Hope’s voice. 

“I do understand,” she said. 

After a pause Fogarty spoke irrelevantly. 



ALIAS RED RYAN 


298 

“Once when I was a red-headed little snide of a 
pickpocket,” he announced, “I stole a mesh bag 
from a girl at a football game. That girl looked like 
you—or what I really mean is she looked like Faith— 
because she was just a kid then like Faith is now; too 
young to weigh things right. I robbed her and— 
since she looked like Faith—well—maybe, once more, 
you understand.” 

Hope sat suddenly upright in her chair. “A mesh 
bag,” she exclaimed. “ I lost a mesh bag at a foot¬ 
ball game at Cambridge. ... It was because 
of its loss that I met my husband. . . . He 

found it in his overcoat pocket.” 

Fogarty sat staring wonderingly into her face. 

“Tell me now,” he demanded, excitedly, “was 
there a diamond pin in the thing, too, by any 
chance?” 

“There was. It belonged to Tom Shell. . . . 

It was by giving it back to him that Barbour got his 
first job.” 

The dance music stopped, but Fogarty sat staring 
at the woman in the chair at his side. Finally he 
said in a low voice, “You must excuse me, Hope, but 
I’m only a gent and I’m excited. I’ve got to say it. 
I’ll everlastingly, abso-blooming-lutely be damned!” 


THE END 






















































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